subject: A Short History Of Registering Vehicles In The Uk [print this page] From the early days of motoring, it became obvious that with the rapidly increasing number of vehicles on the roads, a method of identifing vehicles with their owners had to be developed. In Great Britain in 1903, the government passed the Motor Car Act, which authorised local councils to set up their own registration and licensing authorities so that all vehicles in that region were compelled to register their vehicles where each was given a unique registration. However, by 1919 it became apparent that a new government department was required to control all vehicle registrations and thus the Ministry of Transport was formed.
From 1903 - 1932 the sequence of numbers and letters used ran from A1 through to YY9999. The letters specified the area in which the vehicle was first registered, each county or area in England and Wales were given a specific letter. Scotland and Northern Ireland had their own prefix letter in addition to a county or area letter.
In 1932 a new system had to be found as the previous registrations were starting to run out and a new method was introduced. The new sequence consisted of 3 letters followed by up to 3 numbers. The regional letters became the 2nd and 3rd from the group of 3. In Ireland the letters I and Z were retained whilst in Britain they were dropped. The letter Q was reserved for imported foreign vehicles. During the 1950s the registrations were again beginning to run out, so the sequence of numbers and letters was reversed. However, due to the massive popularity of motor vehicles, the registrations ran out again in the early '60s.
Between 1963 and 1982 a new registration system was introduced where the previous system of 3 letters followed by 3 numbers was still used but a suffix letter was then added to indicate the year of registration. The letters I, O, Q, U and Z were not used and the letter was originally changed on the 1st January every year but motor dealerships lobbied the government so that there was another letter change in August as they were finding that customers were changing their vehicles as soon as the new letter came out. This was approved and from 1967 the suffix was changed on January the 1st and on August the 1st. New legislation came into force on January 1st 1973 that enforced all vehicles to have reflective number plates with black lettering a white background for the front and black on a yellow background for the rear. There were also new laws regarding the size and font of characters used on number plates.
As the suffix system ran its course, once again another system had to be instigated when the year letters ran out and from 1983 until 2001 the suffix system was reversed to a prefix system. When this system ran its course a new one was initiated and this time it was set as 2 letters, 2 numbers and then 3 letters. The 1st two letters revealed the area where the vehicle was registered, the two numbers which month and year of registration and the last three letters are random. This system will run until 2050 when another new series will be required.
