For those who have never previously encountered the world of personalised vehicle registrations, the term "private number plate", or just "private plate" can prove confusing. In this article, we'll explain exactly what a private number plate is, along with some key facts about its surrounding culture and market.
PRIVATE BUT NOT SEPARATE
There can be a tendency to envisage that a private number plate comes from an entirely separate source from the regular, DVLA-issued registration. That's not the case. All private registration numbers are or were issued through official channels. The difference is that private plates are traded privately, between a private seller - that is, someone other than the DVLA - and a private buyer.
If you take into account that all private plates originated from an official source, you arrive at the conclusion that the private plates market is a secondhand market - and largely, that's exactly what it is. Most private plates were issued at some point in the past - often many decades ago - and lived a life on the road, attached to the vehicle to which they were originally assigned. Then, when the life of the original vehicle expired, the registration was essentially recycled for assignment to a different vehicle. Although there's been some deviation from that archetype, it's fair to say that this paragraph sums up the private plate market in a nutshell.
VALIDITY
If it's to be fitted to a UK road-using vehicle, a private plate must, by nature of its origins, and also by current regulation, carry a valid registration. A valid registration conforms to a specific format. There have been four broad formats issued on the UK mainland, each of which corresponds to a dated period of time. The formats are:
- Dateless: under issue from 1903 to 1962.
- Suffix: under issue from 1963 to 1983.
- Prefix: under issue from 1983 to 2001.
- Current: under issue from 2001 to present.
The detail of the formats is a separate stream of information, which we've pictorially summarised on our home page, and documented in more detail in our number plate formats article. But suffice it to say that all of the above formats, regardless of whether they're currently under issue, are legally assignable to a vehicle currently on UK roads - subject to some secondary conditions. For example, it's not permissible to make a vehicle appear newer than it actually is, so it would not be legal to fit a current format registration to a vehicle built in the suffix era.
Additionally, Northern Irish registrations can be fitted to vehicles on the UK mainland. Even though Northern Irish plates differ in format from UK mainland plates, the DVLA permits their use interchangeably with UK mainland-issued plates. It's a quirk of the genre that makes the pursuit of private plates all the richer.
To give some quick examples of valid and invalid registrations...
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FA57 CAR (alias "FAST CAR") would be valid, because it conforms to the current (2001 to present) format. It begins with a two-letter area code denoting the Nottingham postal area, which is followed by a late 2007 / early 2008 issue-date identifier. Then there's a space, and three random letters - which just happen to spell CAR. Notice how a degree of "glance factor" is necessary to assimilate the registration as "FAST CAR". The 5 must be interpreted as an S, and the 7 must be interpreted as a T. We tend to naturally do this at first glance, when the rest of a series of characters appears as it would in a familiar phrase. A huge volume of private number plates rely on "glance factor" to spell out popular and phrases. For example, Nicky Clarke's famous "HAIRDO" plates actually contain the characters H41 RDO. That's a valid prefix-format registration. We interpret the 4 as an A, and the 1 as an I. And in combination with the remainder of a familiar word, at a glance we see "HAIRDO". There's playful sense of fun in the interpretation alone. The fact that it looks like a word, but is actually just a standard vehicle registration, adds to the appeal. Finding number plates that have a strong "glance factor" meaning looks clever, and that reflects on the owner.
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FAST CAR, in contrast, would be invalid, because it doesn't conform to any official format, and - the quickest giveaway of all - it contains no numbers. All valid UK number plate formats contain or contained at least one numerical character, so a registration comprising only letters can instantly be dismissed as invalid.
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So what about FA5T C4R? No, that's still not valid. Even though it does contains two numbers, it still doesn't conform to any legitimate format. A current plate must begin with two letters and then two numbers, so we can rule that out. A prefix plate must begin with a single letter, and then only numerical characters between that first letter and the space. A suffix plate can only comprise letters in the section before the space, so that doesn't work either. And a dateless format, whilst more variable, would arrange the number and the letter characters together. So before before the space you'd either have letters, or numbers, but not a combination of both. Incidentally, F45T C4R wouldn't be valid either.
If you're interested in acquiring a personalised registration on the private market, it's worth studying the formats to get a feel for valid registrations. Knowing which registrations are valid can help when searching for specific personalisations on the private market.
HOW THE PRIVATE PLATE MARKET WORKS
So dealers on the private plates market can't simply generate registrations out of thin air. At the most basic level, they have to acquire registrations from legitimate owners, before advertising them for resale and then selling them on. They may attend auctions, or purchase into stock directly from the public.
But there are other ways in which private plates are sold. Some dealers may act as an agent in peer-to-peer private sales. Although we at NetPlates purchase many plates into our large stock directly, we also facilitate peer-to-peer sales, in which one private member of the public sells to another. The seller will complete a short form on our Sell a Plate page, and we will then list their registration for sale. An interested party will then approach us, at which point we'll get in touch with the seller to ask for their approval to sell. If seller approves, we process the sale and the transfer, and the purchaser pays us a commission. The seller advertises for free and sells for free. The system is very popular, as it dramatically simplifies the process of selling, and gives buyers a much wider choice of personalised plates.
DOES THE DVLA BENEFIT FROM THE PRIVATE PLATES MARKET?
The DVLA levies a mandatory transfer fee, which at the time of writing stands at £80, and which must be paid to the DVLA for the update of records and documentation, when a registration is transferred from one vehicle to another. So whilst the private plates market is technically just activity between private buyers and private sellers, there must always be an official facilitator behind each and every deal.
The DVLA has also recognised the personalisation value of many of the registrations it issues, and now offers personalised plates directly to the public from its unissued inventory. However, it is of course still possible for private dealers to purchase registrations from the DVLA, and then sell them on to the public. To act as "middlemen", essentially.
IS THE MARKET WORTH MUCH?
The DVLA's own figures perfectly encpasulate how important the market for reg plate personalisation has become. In their first thirty years of selling personalised registrations, the DVLA gained the Treasury around £2 billion in revenue. If you extrapolate that kind of activity across the many private dealers, the peer-to-peer sales, etc, it becomes clear that the market is extremely healthy, and that a large volume of drivers have a great interest in personalised or cherished registrations.
Because some personalised registrations are issued directly from the official body, private plates don't account for the whole number plate personalisation market. But they're certainly the central component.
IS A PRIVATE PLATE NECESSARILY A CHERISHED PLATE?
Normally, privately-traded registrations are recognised as cherished registrations, but in the context of number plates, the words "private" and "cherished" don't have the same meaning. "Private" means "traded outside of official issue" (although the actual transfer, as we've seen, must go through an official channel). "Cherished" means "desirable and valued as a commodity". It can be argued that anything being privately traded must by nature also have some level of desirability and value, so the words "private plate" and "cherished plate" are normally used interchangeably. But there is a distinction between the terms and their meaning.
THE PRIVATE NUMBER PLATE IN SUMMARY
Private number plates are vehicle registrations which originated from an official source, but which have since been traded between parties other than that official source.
