Converting a regular van, something like a Renault Traffic, into a camper van is a potentially much cheaper way of getting yourself a camper than buying one. It could also, perversely, be quicker than buying a regular camper if you're after a certain quality of vehicle at a certain price, as you could otherwise be waiting a long time for an already existing camper van to come to market at your desired price!
The main sticking point with doing your own conversion, however, is getting the camper approved as a camper by the DVLA. That is, changing the registration from a regular van so it's legally recognized as a camper, which you would certainly want to do if you're going to do the 'classic' three month jaunt around Europe (this was six months before UK citizens decided to make life more difficult for everyone by voting for Brexit) or live in it in the UK. It's probably a good idea, for insurance purposes, to get it legal even if you're just going to do weekends away in the UK occasionally.
Van conversion applications to the DVLA are reasonably popular. In 2018 (the latest figures I could find), there were 21000 such applications.
HOWEVER, it seems that VERY FEW of these applications are successful. I couldn't find the success rates for 2018, but from Jan/ Feb 2019 to Jan/ Feb 2020 the number of successful applications stood at 2447, and from Jan/ Feb 2020 to Jan/ Feb 2021 there were only 133 successful applications. (SOURCE).
Now assuming the pre-covid number of applications were similar to 2018, that's around a 15% success rate, and OK the next year is going to be covid affected, BUT I would have thought the number of people wanting to do van conversions would have increased and there were a few months of relatively regular business, so that's one hell of a drop off even factoring in the lockdown months.
So it looks like the DVLA has been clamping down on people converting vans.
It is a complex process...
Oddly the internal requirements are easy enough.... bed, cooking facilities, tables, storage.
But then the external requirements are basically that it looks like a campervan from the outside, which is apparently where most applications fail....
The one that REALLY gets me is 'motor caravan-style graphics on both sides of the vehicle.
It's VERY curious...
It's probably easier NOT to bother....
Apparently the number of people living in vans is on the rise in the UK, although this is VERY difficult to verify, there are no national statistics on this.
And I imagine MOST van dwellers ARE NOT going to have all of the above, WINDOWS being an obvious no-no for any stealth van dwellers, a VERY sensible idea IMO.
And TBH NOT bothering makes sense to me, it's so much hassle, it's obvious that MOST people fail, so if you're looking to lead an alternative life-style the chances are you've NOT got the kind of van that it going to pass this test.
AND the DVLA seem to be getting more fussy.
So, if yer gonna live in a van in the UK, go stealth, I guess that's the message here!