Personalised Number Plate Information

NUMBER PLATES:

A Swede with a passion for offensive number plates has failed in his cause yet again, after transport authorities denied two of his latest attempts to create 'offensive' personalised plate combinations.

The man, from Varberg in southern Sweden, gained some media attention last year when he attempted to register a personal licence plate reading "3JOH22A".

The Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) rejected the licence plate request on the grounds of it being offensive, the reason for which is made clear when the combination is reflected in a mirror.

The same man has now made two further attempts to change his plate to "8UTT5EX" and "X32TTU8" respectively, but they were also denied, as they too could be considered offensive.

If not immediately obvious, the explanation for rejecting the latter combination is once again made clear when a mirror is introduced to the equation.

"We get a lot of requests and some of them are very subtle. Many see it as a sport to try and get a word through. This one was quite easy to reject," Eva Isaksen from the Swedish Transport Agency told public broadcaster SVT.

The Transport Agency's rules state that a personalised number plate ”may not be designed if it causes offence or harm to anyone else," including allusions to alcohol, drugs, sex, swearwords, religion or criminality.

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In fact, when the DVLA issues a car’s registration plate, they actually follow a very distinct system.

While it may look like a random combination, a number plate can actually tell you how old the car is and where it was registered.

A new format for registrations was introduced in September 2001, meaning all cars registered after that date would have their number plate made up of three parts.

How to tell where the car is from

The first section of a number plate is the local memory tag – the first two letters of the plate.

This identifies where the vehicle was registered, and is itself broken down into two parts.

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.

How anyone can tell how old your car is just by looking at it

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 and September 1st.

All plates issued between the 1 March and the end of August will use the same two numbers as the year they are registered.

For example, a car registered in May 2017 would have “17”.

Vehicles registered between September 1 and the end of February the following year, use a similar pattern of higher numbers.

When the format changed in 2001, this group of vehicles were identified differently by starting the labelling from “51” rather than “01”.

Therefore this second lot of numbers will always be 50 plus the year the car was registered – so after 2010, the number starts with a 6.

For example, a vehicle registered in December 2009 will show “59” on its plate but December 2011 will be “61”.

Is any of the plate random?

The final three letters of the number plate tend to be a random combination that make 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 a sufficient combinations to last until the end of February 2051.

What about registrations before September 2001?

From 1983 onward, licence plates used a leading single letter to represent the year of first registration.

The letter “A” was used in 1983, progressing through the alphabet, finishing with “Y” at the end of August 2001.

The rest of the characters on the plate were random.

Prior to 1983, the same system was used, but with the year letter at the end of the plate rather than the beginning.

A PETITION against a police chief's decision to sell the first number plate issued to the county has gathered over 850 signatures.

Retired police constable Alan Matthews started the online petition after he found out that the 'AB 1' licence plate was up for auction.

Police enthusiasts have lambasted the decision to sell the plate, which has traditionally been used on the staff cars of Worcestershire's Chief Constables.

West Mercia Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) John Campion claims the sale will enable him to invest in frontline policing.

Mr Matthews, aged 69, who worked for West Mercia Police from 1985 to 1994, said: "It's a piece of police heritage that shouldn't be sold off.

"It was the original number that the chief had. I just think that there's other ways the PCC could save money.

"I'm getting quire ratty about it. When you have been in the police you see how much waste there is.

"It's a sad thing that people in the UK have so much history but don't think much of it."

Jon Cherry, the director of regplates.com, thinks the plate will sell for between £225,000 and £275,000.

He said: "We have sold similar plates recently at this level and the market for high quality original issue number 1 plates is very strong.

"The buyers of these are intent on having only the best and only this plate will suffice!"

Mr Campion said his priority is use the assets at his disposal to make West Mercia a safe place.

"The prospect of a chief constable or any public servant using a private number plate belongs in a time gone by, both for security reasons and public expectation," he said.

"Therefore a considered decision has been made to market ‘AB 1’ and any sale proceeds will be reinvested towards frontline policing in West Mercia."

He acknowledged the history behind the plate but said it had not been used for around six years.

A spokesman for Mr Campion said he was not selling anything else apart from the number plate.

Vehicle registration was introduced in 1903 and it is believed 'AB 1' was first issued to Worcestershire's Chief Constable Herbert Sutherland Walker in 1908.

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The current format of number plates started in September 2001 with the '51' number identifier as shown in the 'DE51YRE' example above. The idea was to make vehicles easily identifiable and to allow 2 changes per year instead of the traditional one issue per year. This took pressure away from car dealers and diluted the rush with registering all new vehicles at the same time. This new format created several million new combinations offering scope for specific unreleased numbers to be purchased.

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A number plate owner has had their number plate withdrawn by the DVLA after a member of the public complained to police that it spelt 'jihad'.

The Ford Fiesta was driven around with the personalised plate for six months before it was reported to officials.

Licence bosses have now banned the plate which was written JH11 HAD and sent the owner a replacement.

The car was reported after it was spotted driving around Newport, Gwent.

One woman who reported it to police after she saw it being driven in her home city said: "How can this be allowed with everything that is going on in the world at the moment?

"I have told the police about it and they said they would make a note of it.

"Surely this plate cannot be legal?"

A DVLA spokesman said the personalised plate had been bought in October last year and had "slipped through the net" of offensive registrations.

The spokesman said: "We try to identify all combinations that may cause offence, and on the rare occasion where potentially offensive numbers slip through the net, steps are taken to withdraw the number.

"As soon as we became aware of this last week we withdrew it and would have then sent a replacement plate."

Plates resembling the word 'jihad', which literally means striving or struggling in Arabic, and is associated with the concept of 'holy war', are unavailable, for example plates starting with JE and ending HAD.

Others which are banned include HO57 AGE, a close match to "hostage", and the chain of characters O54 MA because of its resemblance to the name Osama.

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Overseas territories

Some of the British overseas territories, including Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, use similar number plates to the UK, with the same colours and typeface.

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