Conditions of putting a personal plates on a car

The buying and selling of personal plates or personalised number plates is a huge business in the United Kingdom. The main reason for that is, that there is no way for you to obtain a new, wholly personalised licence plate. This means, you will need to find one that has been issued before and the waiting may take a long time. However, there are lots of car enthusiasts out there who are ready to wait, bid and pay tons of money up until the number plate they were looking for appears.

DVLA the office which regulates all driving and vehicle related permits, certificates, licences and other sort of paperwork is also the office which is responsible for regulating the number plates, personal plates or not, on cars. This means, you are only allowed to put a new licence plate onto your car, when you hold the necessary permissions for it.

Also, it’s essential to note, that when you are buying personal plates, mostly online from either through a DVLA licenced dealer or through the DVLA registration website you will only buy the right to hold the registration number which equals the number and code combination that’s shown on the licence plate. After the purchase, you will get a certificate that will tell authorities that you have bought the right to wear the registration number in form of a plate. Then when you want to get the plate itself you will need to contact a registered number plate supplier to make the licence plate and then you can attach it on your car.

However, there are certain conditions to wear licence plate in the UK. Let’s enlist these:

• You can only put a private registration number on a car or other sort of a vehicle once it’s guaranteed and examined ensuring it can move right with the engine on.
• You will need the certificate you get from the seller, which can be a certificate Nr V750.
• The car or vehicle needs to be registered with the DVLA
• The car must have a valid log book (V5C) with the address and name of the owner
• The vehicle was paid tax after for 5 years continuously or there was a SORN in place on it.

Someone from the DVLA will inspect the paperwork and if needed also the state of your vehicle if deemed necessary.

Once applying online however you will be allowed to use the private number right away. The most important thing to know is, that you can keep the old registration plate. And just in case you ever change your mind about your private plate and decide to take it off, things will get back to normal and your old registration plate will be put back in place instead. All you need is to follow the procedure to take the private registration off of your vehicle.

There are other certificates which you may need especially if the circumstances are specific, such as buying the registration plate actually before buying the vehicle it would belong to. There can be further rules which may apply or hold you back from featuring a number plate on your car. This way, we suggest you to always get in touch with DVLA before you buy a certain registration number.