What To Do With Your Post When You’re Leaving The UK To Travel Indefinitely…
You’ve booked the flights, secured a storage space, given notice on all your household bills, moved out - and then you hand back the keys and realise you no longer have a permanent address to use.
If you’re planning to travel indefinitely or have no current plans to rent or buy in the UK again for now, this isn’t a temporary gap: as far as your bank, HMRC, the DVLA, your pension provider and every online shop is concerned, you now have no permanent address.
It can get a little complicated but here’s what I’ve always done - both twenty years ago and most recently when I left the UK as a solo parent to travel around Asia with three teens in tow…
Why “I’ll just use my mate’s/relative’s address” doesn’t quite cut it…
I initially used a close friend’s address as my ‘home’ address and had my Royal Mail postal redirection set up for there. Technically it works except:
- I don’t want my friend opening literally all my mail, taking a photo of it and sending it to me. There are some things that are private, no matter how good a friend she is! It’s also additional admin on her part, which I don’t want to burden her with.
- If you want to change your address, some places ask for proof of address which means your name on a recent utility bill or similar; this just isn’t possible to give them and so the address is unusable.
[Note: Providing proof of address is the trickiest one to overcome and sometimes requires you to contact them and ask for their preferred solution; the alternative is to use the last address you had/not submit a change of address at all yet, knowing you have postal redirection set up and your mail will still reach you]
What I Use Instead
I've used UK Postbox for several years now, even before becoming nomadic again, with no fixed address.
It gives me a real UK address, one for post and another for parcels to be delivered; it scans the post the day it arrives, and lets me decide per item whether to read it, forward it, keep it or shred it.
I currently use the PAYG (pay as you go) option as my post is minimal but their monthly plans are incredibly reasonable (see below).
UK Postbox also allow me to use their address for Royal Mail redirection which means all my mail now goes to my UK Postbox account and can be scanned and viewed almost immediately.
My UK P
As I have a registered company, I also use a separate company to provide a registered address for my company that I can use for Companies House, my address as a director and other official purposes. I then use my UK Postbox address as a correspondence address to receive updates from here.
UK Postbox is a highly affordable option that means no hassle for your friends or relatives, you keep your privacy AND you can choose how your mail is processed, quickly and efficiently.
Set It Up In This Order…
This is the part people sometimes get wrong, and it's the reason the admin becomes more complicated than it needs to be.
1) Get your forwarding address first. Set this up before you give notice, so you have a new address to type into every form.
2) Set your Royal Mail redirection to that address. It catches everything you forget - and you will forget things. I usually opt for redirection for a little longer than I think I’ll need, to give me extra time to change addresses while I’m on the road.
3) Then change your address everywhere; the redirection is a safety net, not a permanent solution and should only be continued if it’s not possible to change your address everywhere you need (see above; this is usually if validating your address becomes difficult).
4) Close the utilities and council tax last, with final bills going to the new address.
What Still Turns Up Years Later…
The reason a redirection isn't enough: post keeps arriving from places you'd forgotten about.
In my case, my pension, my GP, and a couple of my kids’ things. Being able to read those soon after they arrive means you’re not going to miss anything that needs actioning soon.
You Don't Need This If…
If you're keeping a UK property, you already have an address - use it, though obviously if there’s no-one to open and read your post for you, you may still want to use UK Postbox or similar, or you’re going to arrive back to a huge pile of post and nothing actioned when it needed to be.
If you're going for a few months only and someone genuinely doesn't mind, a redirection to family/friends might be ok. Just remember to bring them a nice thank you gift when you return.
And if you're cutting UK ties completely - no bank, no pension, no property, no tax residency - you may not need a UK address at all, at least not in the long term.
If You’re Leaving…
Sort the address before the storage, before the packing, before the flights. It's the one task everything else might need when you sort it out. This is what I use: UK Postbox
I write about the logistics of working and living abroad — the admin, the leaving, the parts that don't photograph well. If that's useful, subscribe below…
This page contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I’ve paid for UK Postbox myself for years and would recommend it either way.