Reg Plates That Will Not Be Issued By The DVLA

Reg Plates Article

Reg Plates That Will Not Be Issued By The DVLA

The September arrival of the ‘66’ number plate brought the potential for hundreds of familiar words to appear in the thousands of possible combinations of letters and numbers. With ‘66’ most closely resembling ‘GG’, many words were thrown out by the latest update and the DVLA has had to ban any that could cause offence before they head onto the street.

A full list hasn’t been published, but the DVLA has said ‘BU66 ERS’, ‘DO66 ERS’, and ‘OR66 ASM’ have been added to the list of banned plates. In line with the bi-annual plate change, DVLA censors convene twice a year to cast judgment on which potential new plates are too incendiary to grace a new car.

Any plate that’s explicit or could cause political, racial or religious upset are banned, with a spokeswoman commenting: “There’s nothing scientific about it, it’s all done by taste, and if some slip through and we get a complaint, we take the feedback on board.”

The entire list of redacted number plates stretches to over 10 pages long – but has been withheld by the DVLA. Once banned, number plates always stay off limits, so don’t expect to see ‘VA61 ANA’ or ‘CR16 PLE’ the next time you head down the motorway. If an offensive number plate slips past the censors, the DVLA even has the power to force the recipient to hand it back.

Number plates don’t have to be rude to be banned; anything potentially racist, offensive to a religion or crime-related could be outlawed. ‘JE55 US’, ‘15 LAM’, ‘OS55 AMA’ and ‘AD13 CTS’ fall into these categories, along with any plate which could have political connotations like ‘EU16 OUT’, ‘EU16 GON’ and anything containing ‘BNP’.

How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.

The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.

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