Private plate styles
Five formats have been issued since 1904, and which one a registration mark belongs to decides what it will fit and what it costs.
Dateless private plates
No year code at all, so a dateless registration mark fits a vehicle of any age. The oldest style, and usually the dearest.
Dateless private plates explainedPrefix private plates
A year letter at the front, then numbers and three letters. Issued from 1983 to 2001.
Search prefix private platesSuffix private plates
Three letters, then numbers, with the year letter at the end. Issued from 1963 to 1983.
Suffix private plates explainedCurrent style private plates
Two area letters, a two digit age identifier, then three letters. Issued since 2001, and the style still being made.
Search current style private platesNorthern Irish private plates
Three letters carrying an I or a Z, then up to four numbers. No year code, so it fits a vehicle of any age, anywhere in the UK.
Search northern irish private platesHow the system got to five formats
One & two letters, from 1904
Registration became compulsory on 1 Jan. 1904 under the Motor Car Act 1903, and it was the county and borough councils that issued the marks. Codes were handed out in descending order of population from the 1901 census, so the single letters went to the largest authorities: A to London, B to Lancashire, C to the West Riding of Yorkshire. The run continued through two letter codes down to FP for Rutland, the smallest.
The letters that were held back
G, S and V were reserved to Scotland, and I and Z to the whole of Ireland. That reservation is why a mainland dateless mark never carries an I or a Z to this day, and why the Northern Irish style is the one place those letters turn up on a registration with no year in it.
Three letters, from July 1932
By 1932 the codes were running out, so a serial letter was placed in front of an existing two letter code. Staffordshire issued the first, ARF 1, in July 1932. The numbers on these ran only to 999, which is where the six character limit comes from: three letters leave room for three digits and no more.
Numbers first, from 1953
When an authority worked through its forward series it was allowed to reverse the mark and start again with the numbers in front. Staffordshire was first again, with 1000 E in April 1953, and Middlesex issued the first reversed three letter mark, 1 AHX, that Sept. Combinations that could be misread as marks already issued, the ones mixing 1 and I or 0 and O, were held back.
A year letter at the end, from 1963
A suffix letter was added so the year of first registration could be read off the number plate. A was 1963. In 1967 the changeover moved from Jan. to Aug. to take the peak off the new-year sales, which is why E ran only seven months and every letter after it spans two calendar years. Y, the last, ran from Aug. 1982.
The year letter moves to the front, from 1983
The order was reversed again in Aug. 1983, with the year letter leading. It changed once a year every Aug. until 1999, when it went to twice a year to spread the peak: T in March 1999, V that Sept., and so on to Y in March 2001, the last prefix of all.
Two letters, two digits, three letters, from Sept. 2001
Two area letters, a two digit age identifier and three letters chosen at random. A new identifier arrives on 1 March and another on 1 Sept.: the March one is the year, so 26 is March 2026, and the Sept. one is the year plus fifty, so 76 is Sept. 2026. I and Q appear nowhere in the format. Z is kept out of the area letters but is used freely in the three at the end.
Which one will fit my vehicle
A dateless mark and a Northern Irish one carry no year, so they go on a vehicle of any age. Every other style carries the date it was issued and can only go on a vehicle first registered on or after that date. A registration mark can never make a vehicle look newer than it is. Age restrictions works through it with examples.
What makes a number plate legal sets out the measurements and spacing in full, and the glossary defines the terms used here.
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