The current format: two letters, two numbers, three letters
Every car registered in Great Britain since September 2001 has a plate in the same pattern: AB12 CDE. It breaks into three parts, and each part means something:
- The first two letters are the memory tag: where the car was first registered. The first letter is the broad region (L for London, S for Scotland, C for Wales, and so on) and the second narrows it to a local office.
- The two numbers are the age identifier: when the car was first registered, to within six months. This is the genuinely useful part, covered below.
- The last three letters are random, and they're what makes the plate unique. The letters I and Q aren't used, to avoid confusion with 1 and O.
So a reg isn't just an ID: it tells you roughly where and roughly when the car started life. For everything else, the plate is the key to the public record: enter it on our free reg check and you get the DVLA's recorded make, model, colour, engine and fuel type, plus tax status and full MOT history.
Age identifiers: dating a car at a glance
New age identifiers are released twice a year, on 1 March and 1 September, which is why new-car sales spike in those months. The rule is simple:
- March releases use the year itself. A “26” plate means first registered between March and the end of August 2026.
- September releases add 50. A “76” plate means first registered between September 2026 and the end of February 2027.
So 12 is March 2012, 62 is September 2012, 25 is March 2025, 75 is September 2025. Once you know the trick you can date almost any car in the street to six months. Two cautions, though: a personalised plate hides the car's true age (the rules only forbid making a car look newer than it is, never older), and the age identifier records first registration, not the model year the manufacturer built it to. The registration date on the vehicle record is the figure that counts, for tax bands and for the three-year clock to the first MOT.
Older formats: prefix, suffix and dateless
- Prefix (1983–2001): A123 BCD. The single letter at the front is the age identifier: A started in August 1983 and the alphabet ran through to Y in 2001, skipping easily-confused letters.
- Suffix (1963–1983): ABC 123D. Same idea, but the year letter sits at the end: A is 1963, B is 1964 and so on.
- Dateless (before 1963): combinations of letters and numbers with no year information at all. These are prized as personalised plates precisely because they give nothing away.
- Q plates: a Q in place of the age identifier means the vehicle's age or identity couldn't be verified when it was registered: typically kit cars, rebuilt vehicles or some imports. A Q plate isn't automatically bad, but it demands more homework, and it's permanent.
What a plate must legally look like
Number plates are one of the most tightly regulated pieces of plastic in the country. To be road legal a plate must have black characters in the standard mandated typeface on a white reflective background at the front and a yellow reflective background at the rear, with no background pattern, and be made to the current British Standard (BS AU 145e for plates fitted since September 2021). A green flash on the left is permitted for zero-emission vehicles. What isn't permitted: rearranged or mis-spaced characters, screws placed to change a letter, heavily tinted covers, and most “stylised” fonts.
Driving with an illegally displayed plate risks a fine of up to £1,000, an MOT failure, and for a personalised registration, having the right to it withdrawn. It's also a classic tell on a used car: a seller who mis-spaces a plate to spell a word tells you something about how carefully they treat rules generally.
Plates when buying a used car
The registration is the first thing to verify, because everything else hangs off it. Run the reg through a free check and confirm the recorded make, model, colour and engine match the car in front of you exactly: a mismatch can mean an innocent typo in the advert, or a plate that belongs to a different vehicle entirely. Then check the plate, the VIN and the V5C logbook all agree with each other. A car wearing a private plate deserves one extra question: whether the seller intends to keep the plate, and whether the retention paperwork will be sorted before you hand over money. Work through the rest of the buying checklist before you commit.