Reg Plates

Registration plates are on every automobile in the country detailing a unique code for each vehicle, making the car traceable to its owner. It means that those found to be breaking the law can be found and stolen cars can be verified if they are returned. But registration plates have changed a lot over the years, particularly in the way the numbers and letters represent the year and location that the car was issued.

The modern system includes two letters followed by two numbers and then a random group of three letters at the end. The first two letters represent the area the car was issued and the registration office; the two numbers that follow represent the year that the car emerged. The number will either begin with a ‘0’ or a ‘5’, followed by a further number. A ‘0’ means that the car was issued in March, whilst a ‘5’ means it was issued in September. The number that then follows this refers to the year. Therefore a car registration that reads XX53 XXX would have been issued in September 2003.

However, some people prefer to have personalised registration plates. This could be for a variety of reasons; they might want their car to stand out from the crowd, they might prefer for people not to know what year the car was issued or where, or they might want the letters to refer to their business (it might be a courtesy car). In this case they can have a registration plate numbered and lettered as they want (within reason) as long as the combination is not already in use. There are vast databases where all the combinations are stored so that no two cars will have the same two registration plates.

A registration plate must meet certain requirements. The font of the letters must be legible, which means that they must stand out from their background without being obscured and in an authorised font. They must also be of a certain size as set out by the law. This ensures that people can easily make out the numbers and letters on a registration plate so that a car cannot go by undetected.