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Order of Issue of Index Marks

One and two letter marks preceding numbers

Although the Act decreed that registration should be in effect from 1 January 1904, most authorities commenced registering vehicles in December 1903 and a few in November. The oft-repeated claim that A 1 was the first British registration is meaningless in this context - thousands of vehicles had already been registered before the operative date. Indeed, the evidence is that A 1 was not allocated until December 1903, (the exact date is not available since all the LCC's records have been destroyed), whilst Buckinghamshire, Somerset and Hastings had commenced registering vehicles in November.

There was usually a time lag between the date of allotment of a mark by a SR&O and the date the mark was taken into use, but one and two-letter index marks were brought into use in the same order in which they were allotted by SR&O, with very few exceptions. Other than OC, the only case where the order of allocation and the order of issue differed was that of some of the London County Council's later issues.

Three letter marks preceding numbers

Three-letter index marks were not always issued in alphabetical sequence. Staffordshire's first three marks were ARF, (the very first three-letter issue in July 1932), BRF and CRF, because although RF was finished, RE was still in use for motorcycles only. Next after ARF was Middlesex with AMY, issued out of sequence to celebrate Amy Johnson's historic flight. Numerous authorities, (e.g. Bedfordshire, Birkenhead, Coventry and Southampton) issued their three-letter marks in the same order in which their two-letter marks had been allotted, e.g. for Bedfordshire: ABM, ANM, ATM, AMJ - not ABM, AMJ, ANM, and ATM etc. Devon adopted a unique system. They took each two-letter mark in the order in which it had been allotted and issued it in as many three-letter combinations as had been allotted in the latest SR&O. Thus, the initial order was ATA, BTA, ATT, BTT, AUO, BUO, ADV, BDV, AOD, BOD and this pattern continued throughout to YOD. Middlesex allocated certain combinations to major distributors and this led to irregularities in the order of issue but a major departure from the normal order took place in late 1938 when RHX to RMY were specially allotted to the War Department (normall Middlesex issues were then in the Kxx series), followed by PHX to PMY and SHX.

In general, three-letter index marks were used only when the authority in question had exhausted its two-letter series. There were a few exceptions, e.g. Staffordshire, who continued to issue RE for motorcycles until it reached 9999 in 1947 and Middlesex, who still had several incomplete two-letter series when they commenced issuing three-letter marks. Some of the smaller Scottish counties were still using two-letter marks until they commenced the year-letter system in 1964 or 1965.

Reserved series

There are numerous instances of complete series being allotted to a single registrant. Mention has already been made of the fact that complete series were reserved for War Department vehicles by Middlesex, with whom almost all military vehicles had been registered since 1921. In the two-letter era blocks of up to 2000 numbers had been reserved, but with the onset of three-letter marks complete blocks of 999 were set aside, (although in the first few "War Department" series the numbers 1-20 were omitted from the block issue). Several complete series and large blocks in other series were issued solely to armoured vehicles and when in the post-war years Middlesex were running short of available marks, many of these series and blocks were used again for normal issue. Since the possibility of armoured vehicles transferring to civilian use could be ignored, the usual objections to the reissue of void numbers did not apply.

The largest recipient of complete series was, however, the General Post Office, almost all of whose vehicles were registered by the London County Council until 1 October 1969 when they commenced to be registered locally. Between 1939 and 1969 over 150 complete or near complete blocks were thus reserved. London also reserved complete series for other government departments.

Watford was the home of the L.M.S. Railway's road motor department and Hertfordshire allotted several complete series to the railway company and, later, to the London Midland Region of British Railways. Two cities (Birmingham with JOJ and Glasgow with SGD) reserved whole series for their municipal bus fleet and, in the latter case, other Corporation vehicles.

Another notable recipient of complete blocks was the vehicle distribution company, Stewart and Ardern, who for a long period had their own series issued by Middlesex, usually with seperate series for private and commercial vehicles in use simultaneously.

When the Home Delivery Export Scheme commenced in 1953, London, Birmingham and Coventry reserved complete series for these issues.

Complete, or almost complete, series were also allotted to Claude Rye, motorcycle dealer (RYE) and Sir Alfred McAlpine, public works contractors (MCA).