moving to London

Hi garf I think it's better to ask your commune how long an abscence you can have before you have to tell them you left? I'm unclear why you'd want an ID card at an address here if you're living in the Uk? Eu bank accounts always useful here, but useless in uk your wages will have to be paid in pounds you will find it quite an operation to open on in the uk they have all these laws to prevent money laundering ask your new colleges for help you certainly will find it hard to open one unless you have a uk address. Then you need maybe your lease and proof of who you are photo ID style driving license passport etc and usually more than one proof of ID. Renting in London can be tough start the search early good luck

Once you have moved you register with the Belgian embassy in London in much the same way as you would if you moved to another commune and that will largely take you out of the Belgian tax system. It is definitely worth retaining your Belgian bank account.

Those are the easy bits. As has already been indicated, the UK has no proper registration system and what substitutes for the neat and tidy Belgian system can only be described as an untidy and unfriendly mess. You will need a National Insurance number (for tax and pension purposes), a National Health number (get papers from your Belgian mutuelle BEFORE you go as they continue to, in effect, cover you for six months) and, as soon as you have permanent lodgings (not an easy task in itself), ask the local council about registering to vote. This last is important, you can only vote in local and European elections and you may have no intention of voting at all, but the electoral roll is the nearest thing that the UK has to a national register and being on it is half a step towards being able to prove your address. Apart from that, the UK seems to rely on you being able to present a printed utility bill as proof of your domestic address, having failed to notice that the utilities themselves are keen for all their customers to go paperless. Banks, in particular, will go out of their way to prevent you from becoming a customer (because of the remote chance that you might be a money launderer), and without a UK bank account you will find it difficult to rent accommodation, etc., etc. - a real Catch 22 situation. Ah and driving licences are often used as a partial "proof" of identity since the UK version of the European driving licence carries (and is only valid with) the holder's UK address - so anyone asking to see it will be totally bewildered when they discover that Belgian licences don't have your (Belgian) address on them.

Good luck, you will need it. I hope that you don't have a family that are going to have the UK inflicted on them.

You must inform your commune of your departure, as it will be checked by the tax authorities when you do your tax return.

You can keep your bank account.

It's not hard to open a bank account in the UK if you are a UK citizen and have employment - you don't need a utility bill, just a letter from your employers.

Sorry, meant EU citizen!

Garfield, zone 2 is huge and goes from leafy posh suburbia like Hampstead to grimy slummier bits like Bow!

I've lived for along time in both countries (15 in UK, 10+ on and off in Belgium).

As for the UK, when i arrived in Belgium, I was able to open an expat account here in Brussels with ING (but any maor bank would have) using a recent(ish) utility bill from my house in the UK, so my legal address at ING was the UK, but a correspondence (statements etc) was Brussels. I'm pretty sure any mafor high street in the UK will so the same for you, and in fact are a little easier going then belgian banks.

Registering with the council (commune) is ptional and only really need if you want to vote. I went to university for 5 years and worked for ten years in the UK and never registered, although being Irish, I would have been allowed to vote in elections.

Dont worry about national insurance number etc etc. If you will be going straight into work, all of that will be done by your future employer, as they will need that as your tax reference to pay the tax they withheld from your brut.

Medical cover...strictly speaking you need a form E111, or it used to be called that, I think it might be called the European Health Insurance Card now or something. But bear in mind the UK health system works differently from here. The are no bills to pay. The times I've been in hospital in the UK, I haven't even been asked for ID...the NHS 'National Health System) is free, OK...a bit crap compared to here, but free nontheless. When my parents visited me from Brussels, my mother was taken very ill, and ended up hostpitalised in the UK for three weeks. My father offered to pay, as his health insurance from Belgium would have covered it, but the doctors just told him it was free, no charge.

Despite what some comments say about the terrible system for health/registration/open bank accounts etc in the UK, believe its a hell of alot easier in the UK. Compared with the hoops I had to jump through, days off work to go to commune or bank or vehicle registration places, the UK is a doddle.

Just make sure you have as much ID as possible (passport, ID card, utility bills from Belgium etc etc) and lots of money and you'll be fine. BTW, it is not a requirement in the UK to carry your ID at all times, so you can happily leave those things at home when you're sorted.

Good luck

It will be a lot easier than one poster is suggesting, particularly when you don't mess about doing things you don't need to do, like visit London embassies. You don't need a UK bank account to rent a place, you just need a bank account with money in it and it does not need to be in the UK. In London of all places, any rental agent is used to dealing with foreigners. That said, you should not have a problem with a bank account if you have a job, some money and some evidence that you have an address, not necessarily a utility bill. Again, a letter from your employer should be fine. Incidentally, Belgian banks are bound by exactly the same "know your customer" rules as the UK. National insurance numbers are taken care of via your new employer, so not worries there, either. Wander in to your local doctors surgery and register with them, sorted. Honestly, it's really not that hard.

As it happens I have opened an additional (higher earning) Savings Account with my UK bank recently and had to go through the verification of identity and address rigmerole even though I have been a customer of the branch concerned for over 50 years.
The documents I had to provide were (list shortened slightly to remove totally irrelevant items):

To confirm my identity, one of:
passport, UK driving licence, EU national ID card (so eID OK for this)
OR tax notification, National Insurance contributions account statement, review of pay and tax information letter
OR child benefit notification, tax credit notification, pension notification, disability notification, income support notification, incapacity benefit notification

To confirm my address, one of (in paper format, not printed from internet)
Bank statement, Building Society statement, Credit Card statement, Mortgage statement not more than 6 months old
OR
Utility (gas, electricity, water, fixed-line telephone, cable or satellite TV) bill not more than 6 months old
OR
Council Tax bill or demand not more than 12 months old
I am not sure what they would make of items originating from Belgium, I certainly wondered what they would make of an ING statement where the address is printed on an otherwise blank piece of paper.
Different banks may have slightly different requirements - this was NatWest.

Perhaps some of this comes down to the discretion of individuals at the bank. They can be pretty stupid sometimes. My favourite being when I was stood in the UK branch with passport, driving licence, Belgian ID card, bank cards, print out from the account showing I obviously had online access to the account and showing I had moved 300 pounds from the six figure savings account in order to make a withdrawal, and numerous other bits and bobs of ID. They refused to allow me to withdraw 300 pounds because I did not have a PIN, which they won't send to Belgium. They did suggest however that I give a FALSE UK address so they could send me a PIN number. Bloody idiots. Nothing to do with it being Lloyds, just an imbecile branch manager.