You've seen them on the roads. And why wouldn't you? Personalised number plates often stand out like a nugget of gold in a coal mine.
Sometimes they're short, comprising one two, three or four characters. That in itself is a supreme eyecatcher. Sometimes they blatantly spell a name. Like MAR 10N or D3 BBY. Sometimes it just seems way too much of a coincidence that PA55 NOW has found itself onto a driving instructor's car [Spoiler - it wasn't a coincidence]. Personalised plates can be clever, funny, off-the-wall… An everlasting talking point, that often speaks volumes about the driver's status, wit, or dogged determination to impactively represent themselves whilst on the move.
So, you've been thinking about joining this exclusive club of motorists who have personalised their number plates. But where do you start? And do you need any special advice before you dive in head first?
Well, there's a first time for everyone, and as one of the UK's leading suppliers of personalised number plates, over the years we've gained a fair bit of insight into what first-time buyers of private plates need to know. We're going to chunk this article into questions and answers, making it easy to find the information you need. Here goes. A plain-speaking guide from industry experts:
IS THERE ANYTHING I NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR?
The most important issue to take into account when you're selecting a private registration is its compatibility. That is, can you legally assign the number plates you want to the vehicle you have ready for them?
Compatibility is governed by two factors:
- The age of your vehicle.
- The original issue period of the registration.
The ages don't have to be the same, but they do matter. Here's why:
It's a hard and fast DVLA rule that you're not allowed to make a vehicle appear newer than it really is, by assigning a more recent registration.
Dateless registrations are exempt from this rule. You can assign them to a vehicle of any age. And don't worry; if you're shopping with a reputable dealer, there's no need to become a number plate format expert overnight. You'll be able to see your chosen registration's compatibility as you enter the checkout:
AM I JUST BUYING A COUPLE OF ACRYLIC PLATES? AND DO I ALSO NEED DOCUMENTATION?
It's actually the other way around. The documentation is the important part, and when you approach a private plate retailer online, the price you'll see will almost certainly be buying you the documentation, by default without any physical number plates. The documentation - a V778 Retention Certificate - entitles you to officially assign the registration on your vehicle, subject to a set of display conditions, including:
- The registration must be displayed with a 33mm space in the place where the Retention Certificate specifies. The characters must be reproduced in the standard Charles Wright font, each with a height of 79mm, a width of 50mm and, except for characters next to the dividing space, a distance of 11mm between characters. Since the number 1 and the letter I are effectively just a vertical line, they're exempt from the width specification. Although if you're buying a UK mainland plate, it won't contain a letter I. This letter was and still is reserved for Northern Irish plates. But the good news is that if you do need a strategically-placed I, Northern Irish registrations are assignable to UK mainland vehicles, and you can find them via most good retailers' search facilities.
- The number plate's background must be white for the front plate and yellow for the rear. The characters must be black.
- There must be a contrast in reflectiveness between the characters and the background. The characters are designated non-reflective, with the background mandatorily reflective.
Whilst the above conditions can sound a bit daunting, there's no need to stress over it yourself. Provided you purchase your physical plates through [a DVLA-linked dealer]https://dvlaregistrations.dvla.gov.uk/dealers/), you're assured of compliant standards. We at NetPlates are both a DVLA linked dealer and a manufacturer of physical plates in multiple, fully-compliant styles. At the time of writing our plates start at £30 plus postage for a pair, and you can find advice on fitting in our Removing and Fitting article. If you're buying a registration through us, you can easily add physical plates, in your choice of style, at the checkout.
WHAT SHOULD MY BUDGET BE?
It depends what level of impact you're looking for, so it's broadly up to you. The most prestigious number plates can run into £hundreds of £thousands, and typically, the more obvious the personalisation of a plate becomes, the higher up the budget scale things progress.
It's also worth remembering that all registrations are unique. And the supply and demand dynamics surrounding that can get pretty heady. If 5,000 people are chasing one unique registration, that's huge demand versus the most limited supply possible. And it's not necessary to have a degree in economics to work out where the price is likely to go.
But you don't have to spend a fortune to personalise your plate. NetPlates sells private registrations with base prices of less than £50. Stepping up from there, it's possible to get a personal registration incorporating your initials in the base price ballpark of £250 to £1,000. These would be registrations which have special attributes in addition to the initials. At the lower end of the ballpark the plates might have the buyer's first and last initials at the start of the plate, then all three main initials at the end.
For example, if your initials were THR: TR04 THR.
Moving to the middle of the range you could have popular words matched with your initials.
For example: FA57 THR (FAST THR), or TH15 THR (THIS THR).
WHERE SHOULD I START
The best place to start is with a high-access search facility on a reputable retailer's website. Our search facility provides access to tens of millions of registrations, with each connecting directly to a secure checkout.
ARE THERE ANY SPECIAL TRICKS THAT PEOPLE USE TO FIND THEIR IDEAL PLATE?
It certainly helps to know a few things about how the search routine works.
If you enter a name or a popular term, the search routine will attempt to find a close match, importantly, within the bounds of valid and legal number plate formats.
Try entering your name or an abbreviation of it, but bear in mind that a number plate, at maximum, can only incorporate seven characters.
If you don't get a good hit straight away, don't give up. It's common for names to be unavailable simply because the legal combinations of letters and numbers in a UK registration don't allow for them. We wrote a full exploration of valid number plate formats, which explains every detail of what can and can't be done.
One very nifty trick that seasoned registration buyers use to find eyecatching name-plates, is to employ a wildcard search. Using NetPlates' site you can do this by entering an asterisk into your search, where you want flexibility on the characters that can appear in that place. Some buyers also use this trick to find lower priced alternatives.
For example, if you searched "JANET" at the time of writing, you'd see J4 NET.
That's a fantastic plate, but with a base price of £52,100, it's a major, major spend.
However, if you were instead to search JAN*T, the search algortithm no longer attempts to match an E with a letter or visually similar number. Instead, it allows any character in that position. And it finds a great bargain in J4 NYT, at a snap-it-up base price of £650.
Restricting your your searches to smaller components - like JAN, or JRL - opens things up further.
The best advice we can offer is to try a range of search terms and techniques. The cleverest matches are not typically found in one hit. Investing the time can really pay off. And it's not as if searching costs money.
OKAY, I'VE SEARCHED AND FOUND A GREAT REGISTRATION AT THE RIGHT PRICE. WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
If you're buying through NetPlates, you won't have to worry about any of the detail. We do everything necessary to transfer the registration to your vehicle, with no additional cost, and we'll get in touch if we need anything from you. Although we're an online business, we have friendly, knowledgeable staff in our Solihull office, and we'll do everything possible to accommodate any specific requirements you have in the course of the purchase. Many buyers have requests. For example, they might be buying as a gift and need the registration transferred at a specific time. Or they may not have a vehicle ready to accept the plate for a few weeks. Just let our service legends know what you need, and if it's at all possible, they'll arrange it for you.
The transfer itself is normally done online, so provided there's no reason why the registration can't be transferred immediately, the transfer will normally be completed in a day.
IS THERE A RISK THAT A REALLY DESIRABLE NUMBER PLATE COULD BE STOLEN?
This is an important question. Normally, when something costs a substantial amount of money and is highly-prized, it has to be kept under lock and key.
Vehicle registrations, however, can only legally be displayed by the person to whom the DVLA has awarded entitlement. This means that even if someone removes your number plates, they don't acquire any right to display them. Similarly, you reserve the right to have new plates made, and reallocate them to your vehicle. Obviously, you wouldn't want anyone to take your number plates, and for this reason it's worth making sure that they're fitted in a way that makes them hard to remove. But short of stealing your entire identity, there's no realistic way that a third party could steal the legal right to display your registration. Once you've bought it, it's yours.
WHAT IF I WANT TO CHANGE MY REGISTRATION AGAIN IN FUTURE?
Provided your vehicle is roadworthy, you should easily be able to remove a private number plate through the DVLA's Remove a Plate page. At the time of writing, the DVLA charges a fee of £80 for this. The fee retains (preserves the right to) the registration for up to ten years, and covers its assignment to another vehicle. Once you've placed an unwanted registration onto retention, you can sell it as ready to assign. NetPlates operates a free service for owners who want a zero-risk, zero-hassle means to sell a registration.
Of course, you may not want to sell the registration. You may just want to transfer it to another vehicle of your own. This is absolutely fine, and the £80 you pay to remove the plate from its existing vehicle will cover the entire transfer to its new set of wheels.
Personalising your registration plate is something almost any motorist can do. You're now among the minority who know that it doesn't need to be difficult.