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Number Plate History

The first proper car registration system was adopted by the state of Baden in Germany in 1896, and the first country to adopt a national system was Holland in 1899. One distinction of the British system is that a registration issued when it started in 1903 can still be valid on the same vehicle today.

All vehicles on the roads after 1 January 1904 had to be registered with the appropriate local authority. One early suggestion was that cars should be registered with names. Looking at the subsequent growth in traffic, it's very fortunate that this proposal was not accepted!

Codes with G, S or V in them were assigned to Scotland, and codes with I and Z in them were allocated to Ireland. England and Wales were allocated the remaining codes, allocated alphabetically by size of population.

The first owner of A 1, Earl Russell, had queued all night outside the London CC offices in order to secure the plate.

Some codes were omitted from the original allocation due to their meanings or connotations. Some examples are BF, standing for Bloody Fool, which was then a popular acronym. DF (Damned Fool) was also withdrawn following objections. ER was omitted from the original allocation due to being the then royal cypher. Each code was followed by a number of up to four digits.

By 1932, almost all of the two-letter codes had been allocated, and the decision was made to add a third letter to the authority's code followed by up to three numbers, i.e. ABC 123. Staffordshire was the first authority to use this new system, closely followed by Middlesex, Surrey and Kent. Inevitably, some three-letter combinations were banned, such as GOD, JEW & SEX.

After the Second World War, car ownership grew rapidly and the decision was made to issue reversed combinations. The first issued was 1000 E in April 1953 in Staffordshire.

This system remained until 1963 when it was decided that cars would require an age identifier as well as scope for further vehicular growth. Year letter suffixes were introduced, such as ABC 123A, with the last A denoting that the car was registered in 1963. The first of this type was AHX 1A, issued in Middlesex in February 1963. However, some smaller issuing authorities, such as Bute, were still on SJ 2860 before moving on to year letters!

In 1967, the changeover date was changed from 1st January to 1st August due to the high demand for the registration of new vehicles on the 1st January of each year. The appearance of plates were also amended. Characters were now 3.7" high, whereas previously they had been 3.1" high. In January 1968, reflective plates, white at the front, black at the rear, were made optional. From 1 January 1972 they became compulsory.

With Z, I, O, Q & U not being used as year letters, the year suffix system expired at the end of the "Y" year, on 31 July 1983. From 1 August 1983, the format was reversed, and the year letter became the prefix, i.e. A123 ABC.

This saw the introduction of the "Select" Scheme, where "special" cherished numbers, such as A1 & A10 were withheld from allocation and could be bought privately.

"R" registration cars ran for 13 months, until 31 August 1998 to relieve pressure on the licensing authorities, and subsequent registrations were issued every six months, on 1 March and 1 September.

On 1 September 2001, regional identifiers were re-introduced, in the format AB51 ABC, with the two leading letters as the regional identifier (AB = Peterborough), the second two letters identifying the year of registration (01 = March 2001, 51 = September 2001, 06 = March 2006, 56 = September 2006 etc.), followed by three random letters. For the first time, the letter Z was included in the three random letters.