Own legal number plates
If you happen to be searching online for information regarding how you can get number plates for your car in the UK you should be very careful. This warning has become quite necessary as there are some sites that say the UK government has allowed car owners to create, and buy, their own number plates.
Now, this could never be further from truth. To start with, imagine if every- and anyone were allowed to just come up with a combination of letters and characters, have them made into number plates and were to put them on their cars. Apart from the obvious chaos that would come from repeated number plates there is and added risk of people coming up with combinations of letters and numbers that spell out words which could be considered offensive to society in general.
To begin with, when you go out to get number plates be it replacement plates for old or damaged ones or brand new ones, you should deal with suppliers that are registered by the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in the UK and the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland.
The reason is that these dealers that are under the supervision of these agencies will only supply you with legally made and regulated number plates.
The confusion that had arisen and which resulted in some sites posting the news about it being allowed by the government for car owners to come up with their own number plates was probably due to one of two main reasons: the first is that people are allowed to buy and sell personalized number plates. Of course, this comes with its own set of rules and regulations (as an example, you can’t put number plates on a car that make it appear to be newer than it actually is). The trade in these plates is usually handled by dealerships that have no control over the production of the number plates. They are just there in the capacity of brokers to bring buyer and seller together. People buying these special number plates could have been taken to be coming up with their own set of characters and numbers.
The second probable reason is that it is absolutely legal to have custom number plates made that can contain any combination of characters or numbers on them. But, the law also states that these number plates are only for show (they aren’t called “showroom plates” without a reason) and aren’t supposed to leave a showroom or placed on vehicles that are used on roads. Again, people seeing these plates might assume that anyone can come up with a customized set of characters and numbers.
Therefore, the next time you are in the market for replacement number plates make sure that you look for number plates dealers that are registered by the DVLA or DVA. That should help with clearing up any, and all, confusions.
