Licence Plates

Licence Plates are what we use to identify a vehicle. Of course all vehicles have their own VIN number but this isn’t visible to anyone that doesn’t have their head under the bonnet of the car!

Vehicles didn’t always have personalised numbers but the Motor Car Act of 1903 which came into force on 1st January 1904 required all vehicles to be entered on the government’s vehicle register and to carry licence plates. The aim of the act was help other motorists and road users to identify the vehicle if it had for example been involved in a car accident. The first series were issued in 1903 using the series A 1 through to YY 9999. In 1932 the available number plates ran out and a new series was issued AAA 1 to YYY 999, when these numbers started to run out the system was simply reversed (i.e. 1 AAA to 999 YYY).

Due to the increasing popularity of the motor car these numbers were running out by the early 1960s and so in 1963 a year identifying letter was added to the licence plates to increase the number of permutations that could be issued. The year identifier or Suffix changed each year so AAA 1A to YYY 999A for 1963 and AAA 1B to YYY 999B for 1964 and so on. O, Q, U and Z were never used as suffixes though.

By 1982 the suffixes had reached Y and so in 1983 the system was reversed so that the year identifier was at the front of the number, a Prefix. The numbers only started at 21 though so A21 AAA to Y999 YYY, again with the exception of O, Q, U and Z. The numbers 1-20 were held back for the DVLA to issue as part of a sale scheme. It was only a proposal at the time but has since become a great source of revenue for the government.

By the late 90s the combinations inevitably began to run out especially since in 1999 there was a change from the annual August new vehicle registrations to the current biannual system (March and September).  A new scheme was introduced on 1st September 2001 increasing the number of characters to seven; an area code made up of two letters to indicate where the vehicle was registered, an age identifier made up of two digits which between March and August is the last two digits of the year (e.g. 09 for 2009) and between September and February add 50 (e.g. 59 for 2009) and at the end three random letters using all letters of the alphabet excluding I and Q, for example AB09 ABC.  This is the current scheme for licence plates.

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