PERSONAL
NUMBER PLATES
Number
plates were first introduced in Britian in 1904, the first country to
introduce a system was Holland in 1899. The first ever registration in
London was A1, issued to Earl Russell who wanted the registration enough
to have camped out all night to secure it. The
registration system has changed a number of times to allow for the increasing
demand for vehicles.
Local
Region
The
current system for registrations is made up of 3 parts,
as shown below.
The
local region that the car was first registered in, for example
Birmingham would be BA - BY and Chelmsford having EA - EY.
Date
ID
This
is based on the date of manufacture of the vehicle, the current
system was started with 51 being September 2001, then 02 from
March 2002, 52 for September 2002 etc.This will carry on until
2010, where registrations in March 2010 being 10 and 60.
Random
The
last three letters will be random to any vehicle, and can now
include Z.
The
prefix system started in August 1983 to replace the suffix system,
and has the year identifier at the beginning of the registration
mark.
This system continued until the end of August 2001, and a large
number of these registrations were held back for later release
or personalised registrations.
These registrations did not include the letters I, O, Q, U and
Z. Q was used as a prefix where the age or origin of the vehicle
could not be identified.
Suffix
registrations were launched in 1963, when a number of councils
were running out of numbers, an extra letter was added at the
end of the registration that changed anually, i.e. AAA 1A for
1963, AAA 1B for 1964, etc.
Dateless
registrations were the first type of registrations, and started
in 1903. Initially they were the local council identifier code
followed by a random number, i.e. ABC 123, and in the early
1950s they were reversed as numbers started to run out.
These numbers are now in high demand, especially short numbers
i.e. 38 P worth in excess of £12,000 because of the initials
and the fact it is only two numbers and one letter.
