Registration Plates

A brief guide to UK number plates

Number plates in the United Kingdom are required in order to identify vehicles driven on the public highway. They are formatted in a way that conveys certain information about the year and location of the bearer vehicle's first registration. The current registration plates format consists of a group of two letters and two numbers followed by a separate group of three letters. On these plates the area of issue is indicated by the first pair of letters and the date of issue by the pair of numbers. The last three letters are selected at random to give an individual identifier to vehicles issued in the same area during the same year.

Earlier registration plates numbering systems were similar in principle, but the implementation was a little different. In so-called “suffix numbers” the year identifier came in the form of a letter code that appeared as the last character at the end of the plate. In the system that followed, the “prefix numbers”, the previous format was reversed so that the year code letter was the first character appearing on the number plate.

Early car registrations were stamped from sheet metal (and in some countries still are), but in the UK the British Standard is for a plastic plate with specific reflective qualities. Front plates display black characters on a white background, while rear number plates display black characters on a yellow background.