You bought the stone house in the Dordogne before Brexit, you spend spring and half of autumn there, and this year the days simply ran away from you. A neighbour mentioned the 90-day rule at the market, you counted roughly on a calendar, and now a letter from the préfet — the State representative in the département — orders you to leave France, refuses you any time to organise your departure, and bans you from coming back for two years. Your house, your furniture, your return ferry booking: everything is suddenly on the wrong side of a legal line you never saw clearly. This is the situation a growing number of British second-home owners discover after Brexit, and it turns on three mechanisms that look simple but punish approximation: the 90/180-day rule that caps visa-free stays in the Schengen area, the obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF, the formal order to leave French territory) that follows an overstay, and the interdiction de retour sur le territoire français (IRTF, the ban on returning to French territory) that is attached to it. This article explains, step by step, how France counts your 90 days, why an overstay leads almost automatically to a removal order served without a departure deadline, and how you challenge both the order and the ban before the tribunal administratif, the administrative court. Every key rule is quoted from the statute or the case law in force on 5 October 2026, so you can check each statement against its source.

I. How France counts your 90 days and turns an overstay into a removal order

A. Counting the 90/180-day rule: the rolling calculation most British visitors get wrong

Since the end of the Brexit transition period, British citizens are third-country nationals in European Union law: nationals of a country that is neither an EU member nor part of the Schengen area. For short visits they do not need a visa, because the United Kingdom sits on the visa-free list of Regulation (EU) 2018/1806, but that freedom is strictly capped. The British government’s own travel advice states the rule in one sentence: that British travellers may visit the Schengen area, including France, without a visa for up to 90 days in any 180-day period. The same official page warns that overstaying the 90-day visa-free limit may lead to a ban from entering Schengen countries for up to 3 years. That warning is not decoration. It is the bridge between a miscounted holiday and the removal machinery described in the second half of this article.

The counting method is where most second-home owners slip. The European Commission’s short-stay calculator, the reference tool published by the EU’s home-affairs department, explains that travellers must count back 180 days from each day of stay and keep the total at 90 or below. In other words, the 180-day window is rolling, not fixed by calendar year or by trip. On every single day you are present in France or elsewhere in Schengen, you look backwards over the previous 180 days and add up all days of presence. If the total exceeds 90, you are overstaying — even if each individual trip looked short. Two stays of 50 days separated by a month at home in Kent already total 100 days within a 180-day window, and the second stay becomes unlawful part-way through. Days of arrival and departure both count, and days spent anywhere in the Schengen area count together: a fortnight driving down through Belgium and Luxembourg to reach the Dordogne consumes the same allowance as a fortnight in the house itself. The Commission’s calculator adds one important exclusion for holders of an EU residence permit or long-stay visa, who may stay longer than 90 days outside this calculation. Holders of a Withdrawal Agreement residence card (the carte de séjour issued to Britons protected by the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement) or of a French long-stay visa therefore live outside this arithmetic entirely, for as long as their document is valid. If you need to spend more than 90 days in France in any 180-day stretch — the classic six-months-here pattern of retired second-home owners — the lawful answer is a long-stay visa or a residence card applied for before you travel, as explained in our guide to which long-stay visa a British newcomer needs and how to challenge a refusal, not an extra silent month at the house.

French statute law frames the same requirement at the border. Article L. 311-1 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (CESEDA, the French code governing entry, residence and asylum) provides that “Pour entrer en France, tout étranger doit être muni”, and then lists, among the documents a foreigner must carry, the visas required by international conventions and by Article 6(1)(a) and (b) of the Schengen Borders Code, plus, under Article 6(1)(c), proof of accommodation, documents relating to the purpose and conditions of the stay, means of subsistence, medical insurance and guarantees of return. British visitors are exempt from the visa itself, but every other entry condition — purpose, accommodation, means, insurance, return ticket — can still be checked at the border, and the 90-day clock starts ticking the day the passport is stamped. Keep every boarding pass, ferry booking and passport stamp: when the count is disputed later, the paper trail of entries and exits is the only evidence the court will look at.

B. From a miscounted stay to a removal order served without a departure deadline

Once the 90 days are exceeded, French law treats the British visitor as unlawfully present, and the prefect can order removal. Article L. 611-1 of the CESEDA lists the cases in which “L’autorité administrative peut obliger un étranger à quitter le territoire français”, and its second paragraph covers the second-home owner’s exact position: “L’étranger, entré sur le territoire français sous couvert d’un visa désormais expiré ou, n’étant pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, entré en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour ou, le cas échéant, sans demander le renouvellement du titre de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuel qui lui a été délivré”. British visitors enter without a visa, so the second branch applies to them: entry more than three months earlier, still present, holding no residence document. Note the deliberate overlap and the deliberate gap. The Schengen rule gives you 90 days; the removal ground speaks of three months. In practice the prefect’s services work from passport stamps, airline and ferry records and the statements taken during an identity check, and a stay that has plainly run past the 90-day allowance will satisfy the three-month test a few days later. Either way, the outcome is the same document: an arrêté (a formal individual decision) signed by the prefect, notified in person or by post, ordering you to leave France, usually fixing the country to which you may be removed — for a British citizen, in practice the United Kingdom — and deciding whether you get time to leave on your own.

The starting point of the statute is generous: Article L. 612-1 of the CESEDA states that “L’étranger faisant l’objet d’une décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français dispose d’un délai de départ volontaire de trente jours à compter de la notification de cette décision.” Thirty days of voluntary departure (délai de départ volontaire) is therefore the default: a month to sell the car, close the house, book the crossing and leave in an orderly way. But overstayers are the textbook exception. Article L. 612-2 of the CESEDA allows the prefect, “Par dérogation à l’article L. 612-1, l’autorité administrative peut refuser d’accorder un délai de départ volontaire dans les cas suivants”, to refuse any voluntary-departure period in three situations, the third of which reads: “Il existe un risque que l’étranger se soustraie à la décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français dont il fait l’objet.” And Article L. 612-3 of the CESEDA then deems that risk of absconding established, unless there are particular circumstances, in a list of cases whose second item was written for the overstayer: “L’étranger s’est maintenu sur le territoire français au-delà de la durée de validité de son visa ou, s’il n’est pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, à l’expiration d’un délai de trois mois à compter de son entrée en France, sans avoir sollicité la délivrance d’un titre de séjour”. A British second-home owner who has simply stayed on beyond the allowance, without applying for any residence document, therefore arrives before the prefect with the risk of absconding legally presumed against them. The decision will typically be an OQTF sans délai — without a day of voluntary departure — and, as the next part explains, that single refusal automatically drags a re-entry ban behind it.

The courts apply this chain exactly as written, which is why counting correctly matters more than arguing afterwards. On 31 March 2026 the Paris administrative court of appeal (Cour administrative d’appel de Paris, no. 25PA04166) examined the file of a man who had, in the court’s words, “entré régulièrement en France sous visa de court séjour valide jusqu’au 6 juin 2023, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français plus de trois mois après cette entrée, sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour”. The prefect had ordered him to leave without any voluntary-departure period, and the court upheld that refusal: the overstay past the visa, combined with statements during detention in which he said he knew he was unlawful and would not leave, established the risk of evading removal, and the judges found no particular circumstance displacing the presumption. For a British reader the details differ — no short-stay visa, a three-month threshold rather than a visa date — but the mechanism is identical. An identity check during a traffic stop, a visit to the prefecture to ask an innocent question, a neighbour’s complaint about building works: any contact with the authorities can surface the overstay, and once the dates are established the OQTF without a deadline follows as a matter of course. The lawful way to spend the winter at the house was the visa application in London, months earlier; by the time the police report lands on the prefect’s desk, the argument has narrowed to damage control.

II. How a British overstayer challenges the removal order and the re-entry ban

A. Which court, which deadline, and what to ask the judge to cancel

The OQTF is not the last word; it is the opening of a short, rigid procedural window, and missing the deadline ends the case before it begins. Article L. 614-1 of the CESEDA provides that “La décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français ainsi que la décision relative au séjour, la décision relative au délai de départ volontaire et l’interdiction de retour sur le territoire français qui l’accompagnent, le cas échéant, peuvent être contestées devant le tribunal administratif selon la procédure prévue à l’article L. 911-1.” In plain terms, one appeal before the administrative court can attack the whole package together: the removal order itself, the refusal of a residence document behind it, the refusal of a voluntary-departure period, the ban on returning, and the designation of the country of removal. The official service-public.fr guidance, updated for the 2026 reforms, translates the procedure into three practical situations. If you are neither assigned to residence nor held in detention, you have one month to lodge the appeal, and the court has six months to decide. If you have been placed under house arrest pending removal (assignation à résidence), the statute is explicit — Article L. 921-1 of the CESEDA states that “le tribunal administratif peut être saisi dans le délai de sept jours à compter de la notification de la décision” — and a single judge decides within fifteen days. If you are held in an administrative detention centre (rétention administrative), the guidance gives 48 hours from notification. These are receipt deadlines: what counts is the date and hour the court actually receives your application, not the date you post it. Hand delivery against a stamped receipt at the court registry, or deposit in the court’s time-stamped letterbox with a photograph of the stamped documents, is the only safe method when the hours are running. For a British owner living in Paris or anywhere in Île-de-France, the competent court is the tribunal administratif of the place of residence — Paris, Montreuil, Versailles or Cergy-Pontoise depending on the département — and the voies et délais de recours box printed at the end of the prefect’s order tells you exactly which one and which deadline applies to your decision. Read that box before anything else.

What you ask the judge to do matters as much as when. The appeal should seek the cancellation (annulation) of each separable decision — the OQTF, the refusal of voluntary departure, the re-entry ban, the country of removal — because each rests on distinct legal conditions and each can fall on its own. Alongside cancellation, ask for an injunction (injonction): an order directing the prefect to re-examine your situation, to issue a residence document, or to delete the Schengen alert, within a stated time and under a daily penalty (astreinte) if needed. The grounds that work against an overstay-based OQTF are narrow but real. First, the count itself: if the prefect added up the days wrongly — counted a stay covered by a long-stay visa, ignored an absence back in Britain, or confused two trips — the factual basis collapses, and your stamps, bookings and bank statements showing presence in the UK become the centre of the file. Second, the refusal of a departure deadline: the presumption of absconding risk in Article L. 612-3 operates sauf circonstance particulière, so documented ties that guarantee departure — a fixed address at the house, return ferry or tunnel bookings, professional obligations in Britain, family waiting at home — can rebut it and win you the thirty days. Third, and most powerfully for settled owners, private and family life: a British owner whose partner, children or daily life are rooted in France can argue that removal breaches Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects everyone’s private and family life and permits interference only where it is lawful and necessary in a democratic society. The Paris appeal court quoted the provision in full in the March 2026 judgment discussed above, then rejected the argument on the facts — a three-month-old relationship, recent arrival, no professional integration — which shows exactly how the test works: length, stability and depth of ties decide, not ownership of bricks and mortar. A house alone, however loved, has never been a private life; a decade of winters, a French partner, a child in the local school, documented year after year, can be.

B. Lifting the re-entry ban: duration, proportionality, and deleting the Schengen alert

The re-entry ban is the part of the decision that hurts a second-home owner longest, because it survives the flight home. Article L. 612-6 of the CESEDA, in its version in force since the immigration statute of 26 January 2024, provides that “Lorsqu’aucun délai de départ volontaire n’a été accordé à l’étranger, l’autorité administrative assortit la décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français d’une interdiction de retour sur le territoire français.” Refusal of a departure deadline therefore triggers the ban automatically: no thirty days, no discretion, the IRTF follows. Only humanitarian circumstances allow the prefect to dispense with it. As for length, the same article continues: “Les effets de cette interdiction cessent à l’expiration d’une durée, fixée par l’autorité administrative, qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’exécution de l’obligation de quitter le territoire français, et dix ans en cas de menace grave pour l’ordre public.” Five years, ten in cases of serious threat to public order, running from the day you actually leave — so a two-year ban served from the Channel ferry is two years during which the house stands empty or must be managed from afar. The official guidance confirms the current ceiling in plainer words, stating that an IRTF lasts a maximum of 5 years counted from the day the person has actually left the territory. And the duration is not meant to be plucked from the air. Article L. 612-10 of the CESEDA directs that “Pour fixer la durée des interdictions de retour mentionnées aux articles L. 612-6 et L. 612-7, l’autorité administrative tient compte de la durée de présence de l’étranger sur le territoire français, de la nature et de l’ancienneté de ses liens avec la France, de la circonstance qu’il a déjà fait l’objet ou non d’une mesure d’éloignement et de la menace pour l’ordre public que représente sa présence sur le territoire français.” Length of presence, nature and age of ties with France, any previous removal measure, danger to public order: those four criteria are the checklist against which every ban must be reasoned, and a ban that ignores them is vulnerable.

The March 2026 Paris judgment (no. 25PA04166) shows how a ban falls even when the removal order itself stands. The court upheld the OQTF and the refusal of voluntary departure, exactly as described above — and then cancelled the two-year re-entry ban. Its reason, stated plainly, was that “c’est en entachant sa décision d’une erreur manifeste d’appréciation que la préfète du Val-de-Marne a prononcé à son encontre une interdiction de retour pour une durée de deux ans.” The prefect had committed a manifest error of assessment: the man had never previously been subject to a removal measure he had evaded, and he shared his daily life with a French partner, ties the court weighed as strong despite their recent origin. The operative part of the judgment follows in full: “L’arrêté de la préfète du Val-de-Marne est annulé en tant qu’il interdit à M. B… le retour sur le territoire français pour deux ans.” And the court went one step further, ordering the practical consequence that matters most to a British owner planning the next crossing: “Il est enjoint au préfet du Val-de-Marne de procéder à l’effacement du signalement de M. B… dans le système d’information Schengen, dans un délai d’un mois à compter de la notification du présent arrêt.” The Schengen Information System (SIS) alert is the alarm bell of the ban: once entered, it flags the person at every external Schengen border, so deletion within a month is what makes the legal victory usable at the ferry terminal. For a British second-home owner, the lesson is precise. The overstay may be indefensible and the OQTF may survive, yet a first-time, short overstay by a person with genuine ties and no threat to public order should not carry a multi-year ban — and a court will say so, provided the file documents the ties, the clean record and the absence of danger point by point against the four Article L. 612-10 criteria.

Honesty requires the counterweight: courts also maintain bans, and the difference always lies in the file, not the sympathy. On 26 August 2026 the Bordeaux administrative court of appeal (no. 25BX02742), ruling on an appeal against a prefect’s refusal to cancel a removal order, held simply: “Article 1er : La requête de M. B… est rejetée.” No cancellation, no injunction, the State not even ordered to pay costs. The contrast with the Paris outcome is instructive rather than contradictory. Where the Paris file showed a first removal measure, documented cohabitation with a French partner and no public-order concern, the ban collapsed as manifestly disproportionate; where the file does not establish such counterweights, the prefect’s assessment stands and the ban runs its course. A British owner assembling a challenge should therefore build the file the way the Paris winner did: proof of the exact day-count, proof of every tie to France and to Britain, proof of compliance with any previous measure, and any evidence rebutting a threat to public order — then ask the court, decision by decision, to cancel the ban and order the SIS alert deleted. And if the challenge fails, the remaining route is compliance followed by a reasoned request to lift or shorten the ban, supported by genuine departure and changed circumstances, rather than a quiet attempt to re-enter through another Schengen state while the alert is live: re-entry during an IRTF restarts the legal jeopardy instead of ending it.

Conclusion

The 90/180-day rule is a rolling arithmetic that forgives nothing: count back 180 days from each day of presence, keep the total at 90 or below, and keep the stamps and bookings that prove it. Past the limit, the CESEDA chain runs quickly — an OQTF on the ground of entry more than three months earlier without a residence document, refusal of the thirty-day voluntary-departure period on the presumed risk of absconding, and an automatic re-entry ban of up to five years entered into the Schengen Information System. Each link of that chain can be challenged separately before the administrative court within the deadline printed on the decision, and the Paris appeal court’s March 2026 ruling proves that even a lost battle over the removal order can end in a won battle over the ban, with the SIS alert ordered deleted within a month. The durable solution for a British owner who wants more than 90 days in France in any 180 remains the one the system was designed around: a long-stay visa or residence card obtained before travelling, so the counting never starts.