Your Official address:

After 2 years of indecision and delays, our Mairie has finally decided that everyone in our village has to change their address. For most, it's only a change of house number, but for some, the street has been renamed, or their house has been assigned to an adjacent street.

In my case, my house has been assigned to an adjacent street and given a different number. As you can imagine, this causes a lot of paperwork informing everyone and everything that used the old address. It's even more difficult to do for a business.

I found our Mairie to be extremely unhelpful and even obstructive, as I am not the owner of the house. They refused to issue me with “Attestation de modification d’adresseage” which they are required to do by law.

While researching my options, I found some useful information.

It is very easy to check your official address, the one you are required to use under the 3DS law passed in 2022.  Which was supposed to make it easier to identify and find every house in France.

There is a site, address.data.gouv.fr (https://adresse.data.gouv.fr), from here you can search or consult the map, then click on your house to find the official address.

As you can see our new address does not even have a road marked on the map. The road next to our house (our old address) is marked.

I was intrigued by the apparent random numbering system, we have gone from being no. 4 to no.5. our neighbour is no.48 and the two houses behind are 85 and 95. There are only 4 houses on the dirt track and no room for anymore, so why the strange numbers? Well, it turns out it is the number of metres from the junction.  There is no indication of which junction, as you can see our neighbour on the other side is 449 and their house is right on a junction, in their case its measured from the other end of their street.

Great confusion all round, when this law was supposed to make all houses easier to find. Our postman says he is now ignoring all the addresses and is simply delivering by name. The couriers that have delivered since the change are also equally as confused, they can no longer ask for directions, as nobody knows where 639 rue du Chateau is, even though the chateau has stood there for 800+ years.

So how do you go about changing your address with all the government bodies? There is a website to do most of it for you. Change of address online | Service-Public.fr (https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/R11193 ) You will have to open an account or sign in to Franceconnect. A full list of all the organisations they will inform is listed on the site.

All of the others, like your banks, insurances, telecoms etc. will need to be done manually, either online if they accept that method or via the post, making sure you provide the attestation provided by your Maire.

For a business its considerably more difficult, a registration to Franceconnect+ (an enhanced version of Franceconnect) is required. To get this you have to have the France Identité app on your phone, however it's not possible to sign into France Identité with a Titre de Sejour, ie. Article 50 card we have been issued. The government is aware of the problem and say they are looking into it, but no solution will come before the end of the year.

I was advised to sign up for the Laposte L’Identité Numeric, and then to use this to sign in to Franceconnect+ which I did, but it took numerous tries with many errors from their servers. I then found that the INPI.fr site where you change your business details would not accept Franceconnect+ when signed in with Laposte, it gave many errors and told me my data was incorrect. I spent an hour on the phone with an INPI representative only to be told it was a problem on the server and I would have to find another method of changing my address as I could not do it online.

I was told that my Mairie should have dealt with this on my behalf.  When I enquired with the Mairie, the secretary told me she did not know how to do it. So I was on my own, I managed to track down the right paper form, cerfa_13905-04, it's complex and only certain sections need to be completed.

Once this process is completed, I will then have to start writing to all the organisations that do not have online methods of changing address.

It's proven to be expensive, postage and reprinting of business cards, etc. and time-consuming. As far as I can see, it's achieved little, we already had a house number on a recognised street, La Poste and all the courier companies knew where to find us. Most of our neighbours have not and probably will not change the numbers on the front of their houses. So much for making it easier to find.

For those that need it, my new address is: 5 Impasse des Tilleuls, 09500 Tourtrol.