Parking permit episode

Now that back in London, I got all my documents for getting a resident parking permit to be able to park my shiny new car around my house in Notting Hill. There was a quite a queue in the Parking Shop, it took me an hour to get to the desk. And just to find out that they cannot grant me the permit as the car is not registered in the UK and have lived here before bringing the car over! I could not believe this as everyone had told me that I don´t need to register the car here if I plan to take it back to Finland in about 6 months time anyway! I called to million of places to check if this is true and what it would require to register the car, what other expats have done etc etc.... Really frustrating and so unnecessary. Why does everything have to be so bloody complicated and difficult here??

My poll around the expats proved that normally people do not register their tax free cars here and my numerous calls with the authorities clarified to me that by law you actually need to register it if you are a resident in the UK. But all those other expats never face this problem as they live somewhere in the spacious country side and don´t need a parking permit to park their car in their own yard and they normally dont get caught by the police to find out that they drive the foreign car illegaly...!!! Lucky them.

Registering the car here just does not make sense to me (as I would need to adjust the kilometer meter to a mile meter + possibly some other adjustments + all the costs) so my sad conclusion is to keep a company car and to park my lovely new car somewhere for the coming six months... big sigh... :( I can get a parking permit for a company car (done!) and luckily a team mate told me that he has spare space in their garage and I can leave my car there for as long as needed. Big Thanks to Mika!