The plates banned from the new 74 series

The second number plate series of 2024 will be released next month. Regtransfers made a Freedom of Information request to DVLA in order to get the full list of numbers that DVLA intends to withhold from this series.

Business as usual

DVLA's removal of number plates from scheduled releases is nothing new: they do it every time a new series is issued, and we report on it regularly. The intention is to prevent potentially offensive or provocative registrations from appearing on our roads.

Poor DVLA finds itself in a no-win position. If "offensive" number plates appear in the wild, then the agency will, no doubt, receive complaints from disapproving members of the public. On the other hand, if DVLA practices well-meaning censorship it will, no doubt, receive complaints from disapproving members of the public.

Slipping through the net

Occasionally, we are all surprised by the release of number plates that we expected to be withheld from issue. Regtransfers has owned, and often sold, many examples, notably PEN 15 and ORG 45M. Even less frequently, DVLA issues a vehicle registration but later reconsiders and withdraws it from sale.

A few years ago, a man from Chesterfield purchased BO11 LUX. DVLA later withdrew the plate but that wasn't the end of the matter. A refund was not sufficient to soothe the owner's anger so he contacted the Secretary of State for Transport. The decision to withdraw his number plate was subsequently reversed.

Reasons for banning

There is quite a wide range of sensitive issues that can motivate plate censorship. It is common for character combinations to be withheld if they contain apparent references to violence, warfare, drugs, crime, sex, racism, sexism, sexual and gender identity, politics, some aspects of religion and any term that can be seen as substantially insulting. Plates resembling the names of controversial individuals have also been banned in the past.

Consistently inconsistent

As we have seen, some character combinations that we expect to be blocked do, in fact, get issued. Conversely, there have been many instances of innocent-looking numbers being withheld. In some cases, numbers are kept back for later sale in auction where competition can mean that they may command better prices.

Amongst the eyebrow-raising inclusions at recent auctions have been DEV 1L (which was previously withheld in 2016), DEV 11L, DEV 111L and OEV 1L ("Devil"); S70 LEN and S701 LEN, ("Stolen"); ASA 551N ("Assassin"). When one compares these to some of the visually inferior representations that have been banned, it becomes clear that applying consistent judgement to the censorship process can be a challenge.