How Easy is it to Apply for Personalized License Plates?

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Personalized license plates, also known as “vanity plates” or “style number plates”, are a very common thing for vehicle owners to purchase. In fact, over 4.2 million registrations were sold during the first 25 years of the DVLA’s initiative to begin selling personalised plates, raising over £2 billion for the UK Treasury.

However, it’s not as simple as going to the DVLA, jotting down the plate number you want, and walking out with your brand new personalised license plate. It’s a bit more involved than that, so in this article, we’re going to walk you through the basic steps of obtaining a personalised license plate from the DVLA, as well as some alternatives.

How are personalised number plates obtained?

There are three primary methods of obtaining your own personalised number plate. You can buy one directly from the DVLA, either through direct registration or through a DVLA auction for rarer plate numbers.

Buying from the DVLA

The DVLA offers a search tool for finding a custom plate number you want. You simply put in the desired plate number, and the search engine will return whether the plate is available or not. If your desired plate number is not available, it may list similar plate numbers available in upcoming DVLA auctions.

The format you need to search in is:

• Two letters followed by two numbers, and then three more numbers (AA 22 123).
• One letter, followed by one to three numbers, and then three more letters (A 123 ABC).

The first style is the modern plate style, and the second are prefix plates which were sold prior to 2001.

Of course, the DVLA has rules pertaining to plates that spell out vulgar words, and they release an annual list of “banned” plate numbers that are deemed vulgar. Some amusing choices the DVLA elected to ban include:

• AS20 HOL
• GO20 HEL
• B70 MEE

You can see more of the plate numbers deemed too distasteful for the road by the DVLA here, it’s quite a list.

You can also check out DVLA’s listed plates for auction on their DVLA plate auctions page. As you can tell, some plates can go for a hefty amount, such as plate # “360 A” selling for £20520, or stylised names like “ANN 486L” (Annabel) for £6510.

Going through a personalised license plate broker

Another option is to go through a company or broker that re-sells vanity plates, or completes the process for you. This will save you a lot of time and trips to the DVLA, as companies like AbsoluteReg.co.uk have simple three step processes to obtain your personalised license plate.

As an example on the company linked above, you simply:

1. Use their search database to find a plate you want.
2. Order it online.
3. Receive the plate and all necessary documents in as little as 7 working days.

This eliminates a lot of the hassle of going through the DVLA and significantly cuts down the waiting time for your new plate and documentation to arrive. You’ll pay a small fee on top of the cost of the plate for convenience, but if you’re throwing down a few thousand pounds on that perfect vanity plate, it’s probably no issue to you.

Buying personalised license plates privately

The final method of obtaining a personalised license plate would be buying one from a private seller. This would of course require a bit of paperwork from the DVLA, particularly the V317 – Application to Keep a Vehicle Registration Number and put it on Another Vehicle.

It helps to look through classified adverts in newspapers’ and car magazines, as they can contain classified adverts for rarer plate numbers.

DVLA plate suppliers.