Keeping a UK life with no fixed address — the GP and 'proof of address' walls keep stopping me

On the GP specifically: the published NHS guidance in England is that you do not need proof of address or immigration status to register with a practice, and a practice cannot refuse you solely for lacking a fixed address. The gap is between the guidance and the receptionist, and I have been turned away by two practices before being registered without fuss by a third. Print the relevant page, be polite, and ask them to record the refusal reason if they say no. It is genuinely a case where knowing the rule is most of the battle.

Insurance is where I would be most careful, and I would not take a workaround from a forum on this one. Vehicle insurers price on where the vehicle is normally kept overnight, and an address that is not really yours is the sort of thing that surfaces at claim time rather than at quote time. I ended up phoning a broker, explaining the actual situation, and paying somewhat more for a policy written for it. It cost me about a fifth more than my previous premium and I stopped worrying, which was worth more than the difference.

I used a relative's address for three years and it was fine right up until it was not. A claim got queried because I had not been at that address in months and my own social media said so. It was eventually paid, after a long few weeks. Do not build the plan on an address you cannot honestly describe as where you live, because the one time it matters is the one time you actually need the insurance.

Practical layer that solved most of the day-to-day for me: a paid address service for post and general admin, a bank that is happy with it, and then honesty with the two or three organisations where the address genuinely matters. Do not try to make one address serve all purposes. Post, banking, vehicle and healthcare are four different problems and they have four different answers.

Keep a room rented from a friend at a nominal amount, with a written agreement and a payment that shows on a statement. Cheapest solution to about six separate problems and the only one that is straightforwardly true.

Stay on the electoral roll somewhere legitimate if you possibly can. It is the quiet backbone of your credit file, and after two years of no registration I found myself failing identity checks for things that had nothing to do with borrowing money.