A place in between tip-up seats (7)

I believe the answer is:

staines

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'seats' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with contact as well as being verbs in their -s form.
Maybe they are linked in a way I don't understand?

'a place in between tip-up' is the wordplay.
'a place in' becomes 'taine' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'between' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'tip' means to remove the middle letters (I've seen 'tips of' mean this).
'up' becomes 'skywards'.
'skywards' with its middle taken out is 'ss'.
'taine' put within 'ss' is 'STAINES'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for staines that I've seen before include "Town SW of Heathrow" , "Surrey town on Thames" .)

I've seen this clue in the Evening Standard.

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