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On to year prefixes "Z" and also, I, O, Q & U were not used as year letters, so the suffix system expired at the end of the "Y" year, on 31 July 1983. A while beforehand the government had published a consultation paper on what form the system should take after that date and the outcome of this consultation exercise was that the format should be "reversed", i.e. the year became a prefix as in A123 ABC. At the same time a number of other changes were made to the system. Until AUgust 1984, a vehicle which was newly registered second-hand, e.g. because it was imported after being used abroad or was an ex-military vehicle, would receive the current year letter. This meant that some old vehicles had incongruous modern registrations. Furthermore, occasionally people buying second-hand vehicles might be misled regarding its age and some businesses actually imported used vehicles from Ireland or the Channel Islands, so they could profit from them having the latest registration. From 1 August 1984 the government decided that second-hand vehicles newly registered would be given a year letter appropriate to their age. This raised the problem that it was not always possible to determine the date of a vehicle, e.g. a kit car or a vehicle imported from abroad with inadequate documentation. Such vehicles were therefore to be given a Q-registration, a plate in the format Q123 ABC. The introduction of year letters made cherished numbers more popular. The decision was therefore made to start A-registration issues at 21 instead of 1, so the numbers A1 to A20 were withheld. Part way through the G-year, the range of numbers withhelf was increased to include other "nice" numbers like 30, 33, 100 and 111 and certain car model numbers, such as 911. Subsequently the "Select" Scheme whereby most withheld numbers could be purchased was introduced. Since registrations were computerised in 1974, most numbers have been allocated to garages in blocks. The garage allocates the numbers to particular vehicles as they are sold, returning to the LO to complete the necessary "paperwork" (or more precisely "computerwork") and obtaining the tax disc before the vehicle is delivered. A few vehicles would be registered directly at the LO, e.g. personal imports, but these would be the exception. A new scheme has, however, now been introduced called Automatic First Registration and Licensing (AFRL). This was first trialled by Ford dealers in Bristol, with M-GAE being the first AFRL series. Under this scheme the vehicle is registered by the garage using computer links and the tax disc is issued by the garage. Since P-registration the AFRL scheme has been more widespread. A consequence of AFRL is that two parallel series have to be used at once, a series for ordnary issues and a series for AFRL. As a result, since the "R" year, registration issues have appeared in a much more random way. Previously they followed a generally logical sequence alphabetically (with the occasional deviation which added interested to the hobby!), but now the progression is much less logical. The year letter system has increasingly caused problems of a
peak of registration in August with around a quarter of new vehicles
being registered in that month. This has resulted in pressure
from the motor trade for a change in the system and following
a consultation exercise a new one was adopted. As a consequence,
"R" was used for 13 months, til 31 August 1998 and since
then prefix letters have changed every six months, on 1 March
and 1 September. This meant that the system lasted til 31 August
2001 when the new system was adopted. |
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