What do the characters on a number plate mean?
DO you ever get bored in traffic and end up staring at different licence plates, wondering what the characters mean?
Well, here is a break down of what each character on a number plate means.
What do the letters on a licence plate mean?
When the DVLA issues a car registration plate, they follow a very distinct system.
The first section of a number plate is the local memory tag - the first two letters of the plate identify where the vehicle was registered.
The first letter stands for the local area, for example, E denotes Essex, while L stands for London.
The plate's second letter then identifies at which DVLA office in that area the registration took place - multiple letters can signify the same DVLA office.
The letters I, Q and Z are not used as local office identifiers, while Z can be used only as a random letter.
WHICH REGION DOES EACH LETTER STAND FOR?
A - Anglia
B - Birmingham
C - Cymru
D - Deeside
E - Essex
F - Forest and Fens
G - Garden of England
H - Hampshire and Dorset
K - No official region
L - London
M - Manchester and Merseyside
N - North
O - Oxford
P - Preston
R - Reading
S - Scotland
V - Severn Valley
W - West of England
X - Denotes personal export
Y - Yorkshire
How can you tell how old your car is using your licence plate?
The two numbers in the middle of your plate identify how old the car is.
The DVLA issues two lots of number plate combinations each year, on March 1 and September 1.
All plates issued between March 1 and the end of August will use the same two numbers as the year they are registered.
For example, a car registered from March-August 2021 would have "21".
For cars registered between September 2021 and the end of February 2022, it will be the year - 21 - plus 50, which would make it 71.
The new system began in 2001 with registrations 01 and 51.
Is any of a number plate random?
The final three letters of the number plate tend to be a random combination that makes the registration unique.
But it's not uncommon for cars with neighbouring letter sequences to be from the same manufacturer, due to batch allocation of new registrations to dealers by the DVLA.
The letters "Q" and "I" are excluded from the random sequence, along with any phrases that are deemed offensive.
Using the current scheme, there will be sufficient combinations to last until the end of February 2051.
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What about registrations before September 2001?
From 1983 till September 2001 licence plates used a leading letter to represent the year of first registration.
The letter "A" was used at the front of the plate in 1983, progressing through the alphabet, finishing with "Y" at the end of August 2001.
There were hundreds of region codes using a combination of a leading letter and a second to identify where the car was from.
Before 1983, the same system was used, but with the year letters at the end of the plate rather than the beginning.