wrans/answers2025-11-17 conversation_158
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-11-17)

UK Parliament Hansard data: wrans/answers2025-11-17 conversation_158

Dr Al Pinkerton:To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department plans to review the regulatory framework for vehicle number plate suppliers to tackle (a) the production of ghost plates and (b) number plate cloning. \p Lilian Greenwood: The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and other government departments to improve the identification and enforcement of number plate crime, including the use of cloned number plates. It is already illegal to use a vehicle displaying cloned number plates.

The law requires that anyone who supplies number plates for road use in the UK must be registered with the DVLA. It is a legal requirement for suppliers to carry out checks to ensure that number plates are only sold to those who can prove they are entitled to the registration number. Number plate suppliers must also keep records of the plates they have supplied. Selling a number plate without carrying out these required checks carries a maximum penalty of a fine of £1,000 and the potential removal from the Register of Number Plate Suppliers (RNPS).

The DVLA is currently considering options to ensure a more robust, auditable RNPS process which would enable tighter checks on number plate suppliers.

The DVLA is also part of the British Standard Institute (BSI) committee that has recently reviewed the current standard for number plates. The proposed amendments are intended to stop the production of number plates with raised characters and will prevent easy access to plates with ‘ghost’ characteristics. The proposals will also prevent suppliers from adding acrylic letters and numbers to the surface of the number, meaning any finished number plate must be flat. The proposed changes are currently subject to a public consultation that closes on 13 December 2025 and can be found online at https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/projects/2025-01059.

No estimate has been made of the administrative costs incurred by motorists when resolving cases of (a) cloned and (b) misused registration marks.

The table below shows the number of occasions where members of the public have contacted the DVLA about correspondence, fines or penalties that they have received from third parties about the use of vehicles which they do not recognise or accept responsibility for. The table also includes the number of replacement vehicle registration numbers the DVLA has issued following receipt of these notifications. Replacement registration numbers are provided free of charge but the purchase of new number plates is the responsibility of the registered keeper. It is important to note that potential cloning is just one of the possible reasons why someone might receive such correspondence. A proportion of these cases will have been made as a result of errors for example, where a vehicle registration number has been entered incorrectly. Information about how many of these cases resulted in penalties, fines or enforcement action being withdrawn from affected motorists is not held.

Calendar Year

Number of reports

Number of replacement VRNs

2020

7,377

112

2021

7,430

61

2022

7,837

101

2023

9,848

87

2024

10,461

136

2025 (to 31/10)

9,385

137