Registration Numbers

Why did we start using Registration numbers for our vehicles?

All vehicles registered in the UK have unique registration numbers, the British government decided over one hundred years ago that the growing demand for motorised vehicles would need to be monitored and that each vehicle would need its own individual identity. In 1903, the first registration number issued in the UK was A1 by London county council. From then on all vehicles to be used on UK roads would need to be registered with totally unique UK Registration Numbers. Different County Councils used different letters to register each vehicle in there area, London started with a single "A" (hence "A 1"). Birmingham O. In England and Wales the letter codes were initially allocated in order of population size (by the 1901 census), whilst Scotland and Ireland had special sequences incorporating the letters "S" and "I" respectively, which were allocated alphabetically: IA = Antrim, IB = Armagh, etc. When a licensing authority reached 9999, it was allocated another two letter registration number, but there was no pattern to these subsequent allocations.

Registration Numbers - 1932 to 1963 By 1932, the available numbers within this scheme were running out, and an extended scheme was introduced. This scheme consisted of three letters and three numbers, taken from the series AAA1 to YYY999. Note that certain letters - I, Q and Z - were never used, as they were considered too easy to mistake for other letters or numbers, or were reserved for special use, such as the use of I and Z for Irish registrations. (After independence, the Irish Republic continued to use this registration numbers scheme until 1986.)

The three-letter registration numbers scheme preserved the area letter codes as the second pair of letters in the set of three, and the single letter area codes were deleted (since prefixing a single letter code would create a duplicate of a two-letter code). In some areas, the available registration numbers with this scheme started to run out in the 1950s, and in those areas, a reversed sequence was introduced, i.e. 1AAA-999YYY. The ever-increasing popularity of the car can be gauged by noting that these sequences ran out within ten years, and by the beginning of the 1960s, a further change was made in very popular areas, introducing 4-number registration number sequences with the one and two letter area codes, but in the reverse direction to the early scheme (i.e. 1A -9999YY).

Registration Numbers - 1960s to 1982 In 1963, car registrations were running out once again, and an attempt was made to create a national scheme to alleviate the problem. The three letter, up to three number system was kept, but a letter suffix was added, which changed every year. In this scheme, numbers were drawn from the range AAA1A-YYY999A for the first year, then AAA1B-YYY999B for the second year, and so on. Some areas did not adopt the year letter for the first two years, sticking to their own schemes, but in 1965 adding the year letter was made compulsory.

As well as yielding many more available registration numbers, it was a handy way for car buyers to know the age of the vehicle immediately. At first the year letter changed on January 1st every year, but car retailers started to notice that car buyers would tend to wait towards the end of the year for the new letter to be issued, so that they could get a "newer" car. This led to major peaks and troughs in sales over the year, and to help flatten this out somewhat the industry lobbied to get the month of car registration changed from January to August. This was done in 1967, a year that had two letter changes: "E" came in January, and "F" came in August. The month remained at August until 1999.

Registration Numbers - 1982 to 2001 By 1982, the year suffixes had reached Y and so from 1983 onwards the sequence was reversed again, so that the year letter - starting again at "A" - preceded the registration numbers then the letters of the registration number. The available range was then A1AAA-Y999YYY. Towards the mid-90s there was some discussion about introducing a unified scheme for Europe, which would also incorporate the country code of origin of the vehicle, but after much debate Britain decided not to adopt such a scheme. The changes in 1983 also bought the letter Q into use. It was used on vehicles of indeterminate age, such as those assembled from kits, substantial rebuilds, or imported vehicles where the documentation is insufficient to determine the age. It was seen as an aid to consumer protection.

By the late 1990s, the range of available registration numbers was once again starting to run out, exacerbated by a move to biannual changes in registration letters (March and September) in 1999 to smooth out the bulge in registrations every August, so a new scheme needed to be adopted. Rather than stick with a variation of the ad-hoc numbering that had existed since 1903, it was decided to research a system that would be easier for crash or car crime witnesses to remember and clearer to read, yet still fit within a normal standard plate size. In addition, the car sales industry were finding August was becoming overly busy, and started to push for two changes per year. This change was brought in early, using the existing scheme, which helped to run the numbers out more quickly. The current system was introduced in 2001.

Personalised Number Plates & Registration Numbers Information