Side seats, belts, insurance and V5 advice...

Hi all
We have more or less settled on an Peugeot Autosleeper Harmony with the roof bed as it has better storage than the overhead lockers.  We have viewed two but both where older (N reg) - we now have a  another to view next week that is a T reg Petrol although is only a 2 berth with the overhead lockers.

We have now seen a Symphony that has the roof bed but only one forward facing travel seat, although the side bench seat has factory fitted (so I am advised) lap belts. Searching on here and googling for details of the seat belt laws, it looks like the side facing seats can legally be used for travel although there are possible safety issues with them and lap belts.   

The reason we where looking at the Harmony was that we may occasionally want to take 2 additional adult passengers and whilst I appreciate the risks, as this will be very infrequently (if at all), if we can transport them legally on side seats it would give us more of a choice in picking a van.

As a company car user, I haven't seen a V5 document for a very long time - so my first question is, does a motorhome V5 document state how many designated passenger seats a motorhome has and if so, does it include side seats with manufacturer fitted lap belts.

The next question is, when I get insurance, will the insurance company ask about travel seats or will then know if it only has 3 forward facing seats and only insure me to have 3 passengers regardless of lap belts.

I would be interested to hear if anyone has a Symphony or similar van with lap belts and what there experience of insurance is...

Thanks
richard

RichardB wrote:As a company car user, I haven't seen a V5 document for a very long time - so my first question is, does a motorhome V5 document state how many designated passenger seats a motorhome has and if so, does it include side seats with manufacturer fitted lap belts.

The next question is, when I get insurance, will the insurance company ask about travel seats or will then know if it only has 3 forward facing seats and only insure me to have 3 passengers regardless of lap belts.

I can sort of answer those. Just looked at the V5 for my Symbol (2000 X reg) which only has belts on the 3 forward facing seats. The 'Number of seats inc. driver' field is blank, so in this case, no the V5 doesn't state how many designated travelling seats it has. This may be different for newer vans, someone with deeper pockets will no doubt be along shortly to tell us :-)

Only my insurance documents it states number of seats = 3. They must have asked as I certainly wouldn't have volunteered the information had they not. If you've confirmed that the side facing seats with belts are legal for travel then I'd tell the insurers '5' if they ask. I expect they ask to find out if the number of seats is into minibus territory.

This does seem to vary a lot. I'm fairly sure my last AS conversion showed the number of seats as blank. My current (non A-S) van shows it as 2, even though the van has 4 fully belted forward-facing seats! This is probably because it was registered by the supplying dealer before being converted, at which point it actually did have only 2 belted seats...

I personally would not allow any passenger to use a sideways-facing seat with lap belt if my van had them - all the evidence I've seen is that they do little good, and potentially can cause major injury.