How to rewew your Brexit residency card: the Lot prefecture explains
Department says process has gone well so far but extra staff were recruited to cope with workload
The Lot department is popular with British people, both for main and second homes
Richard Semik/Shutterstock
The prefecture of the Lot, one of the first in France to set up an online process for Brexit Withdrawal Agreement (WA) card renewals last year, has told The Connexion about the steps required and how long it takes.
The prefecture put a procedure online in September 2025 hosted on the website Démarche Numérique (formerly Démarches Simplifiées), as initially requested by the interior ministry, which sought to simplify the process for Britons in France.
Around a quarter of prefectures have now done so, but others have different processes in place.
The Lot's Démarche Numérique process asks for the standard documents to be scanned (see article here for more about this), including:
- Copy of valid (UK) passport
- Copy of the residency card being renewed
- Proof of a French address, dated in the last six months (eg. utility bill).
It invites people to apply as close as possible to two months before their previous card expires.
It takes 20-30 days for staff at the prefecture's bureau des migrations et des missions de proximité (BMMP) to check the application and call to invite you to an appointment, to which you should bring three passport photos.
A fingerprint scan is taken at the appointment – which is essential, as fingerprints are not stored for more than five years.
The new card is then validated by the prefecture staff.
Printing of the card can take up to another 30 days maximum, and you will be invited to collect the card.
A prefecture spokeswoman said: "It's all going very well for the time being. However, for France, Brexit has increased the amount of workload for the state services. It was easier before when the British were part of the EU."
The prefecture told us it recruited "a lot" of extra contractuel (on standard work contracts, as opposed to fonctionnaire) staff due to Brexit in 2021, when 1,751 applications were processed, relating to 459 five-year and 1,292 10-year cards.
This year, around 500 cards are expected to be renewed and, as of early February, the prefecture had received 138 renewal requests and approved 68.
The exact number of renewals will depend on factors such as numbers who have returned to the UK or moved to Lot from other departments, however the prefecture estimates that the number of Britons in the area has remained fairly stable in recent years.
It has recruited another new staff member this year to help with renewals, and expects applications to spike again in 2031, when 10-year cards issued to people who had lived in France more than five years at Brexit will need to be renewed.
The Lot has an email for queries about the Brexit card renewals process, for Lot local residents, at: pref-etrangers@lot.gouv.fr.
Other than Brexit card renewals, new Brexit (Withdrawal Agreement) cards are now only issued to:
- Close family members of cardholders who are joining them in France, and where the relationship existed before Brexit
- Young people from Brexit WA families (and who do not have French citizenship) reaching age 18.
Britons moving to France post Brexit are otherwise not eligible for 'WA' cards and must follow standard immigration procedures, starting with a visa application from the consulate in the country where they live.
