Non transferable plate

david29dpo

Recently bought a 09 reg secondhand car (1 former keeper)

The first owner put his private reg on it shortly after purchase.

Just before sale (to me) he removed it and the car was given back its original reg.
The V5 now has non transferable on it (The first owner is sure when he bought the car the V5 did not say this)

I was wondering why this is, the plate is totally worthless, spells nothing. Even if altered and you stand upside down and squint it would mean nothing!

I have transferred many numbers on my cars in the past and have always had my old number back but never had non transferable put on the V5.

spiro

I think that means you can't transfer that plate to another car but you can put another plate on the car but when that is removed it will revert to the plate that is on it now,

Ada3050

Spiro is correct.

It means the number now on the car is non transferable to another car/van. Perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.

david29dpo

Thanks but why?

rodenal

It's about as simple as it's been allocated to the car for life (in theory) and not as a private, transferrable plate.

As far as i'm aware no private plates start their life allocated to a vehicle, they are created for sale.

droopsnoot

rodenal wrote: »

As far as i'm aware no private plates start their life allocated to a vehicle, they are created for sale.

That depends on the plate and how it is "private" - not all of them were sold by the DVLA as private plates, some are just acquired by accident. A mate of mine has a standard date-suffix plate but with a single digit - 1 - and keeps it for his daily driver just because he likes it. The letters have no significance, but it happened to be on a car his Dad used to own.

The rules have changed - it used to be that plates were issued in numeric and alphabetic sequence, so for example around here you'd start with ATU 1M, go up to ATU 999M, then start again at BTU 1M and so on. Then someone at the DVLA got wise to these numbers having certain popular combinations, so from A-prefix plates on they started withholding numbers 1-20, all the double-digit and triple-digit numbers (22, 333 etc.), and all the round hundreds (and perhaps 30, 40, etc). These were then sold as "private" plates, either directly or by auction. I've noticed recently that they've started scanning new plates to get the best value out of them - I wanted to buy "LA 60 NDA" when the new plates were released, so I could sell it to an Aston Martin owner for a massive profit, but it was "reserved for auction" and probably went for a lot of money. Nice that they're maximising return for the tax payer.

But when a lot of what I would call "proper" private plates were issued (before the date suffix) they were just plates. "ABC 1" and "MUS 1C" (for example) weren't private plates, it just happened that someone bought a car and had it registered at what turned out to the right time.

I've seen quite a few cars around here with what would otherwise be a "normal" registration but because the first or last three letters spell a name ("LYN" is one, I think I've seen a "SUE" and a "JOE") they're transferred. When I bought my last daily car I almost transferred the previous plate because I'd had the previous car for 15+ years and I wanted to keep something of it, but the letters or numbers had no significance to me other than that.

Another scenario for getting a non-transferrable plate is if you had an old vehicle which had a plate on it that you wanted to sell. You transfer the plate to another vehicle or onto a retention certificate, and the DVLA give you a nice new age-related plate for your car. But that might be another nice plate, so the DVLA aren't daft enough to be giving you a cash cow - they mark it non-transferrable so you can't make more money at their expense.

boyced

depends on the plate, my mate had a golf with BNP at the end of it. DVLA did this so he couldn't sell it on to Nick Griffen

Joe_Horner

david29dpo wrote: »

Thanks but why?

There used to be a nice little earner available if you had an old car (especially pre-date letter) where you'd sell the number - coach companies like them to hide the age of their fleet - and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell that one and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell..... well, you get the idea.

In order to prevent that, DVLA now issue "non-transferrable" numbers whenever they issue a replacement for any reason, on any age of car. I guess it's a case of being easier to implement as a blanket rule than different rules in different circumstances.

Gloomendoom

Joe_Horner wrote: »

There used to be a nice little earner available if you had an old car (especially pre-date letter) where you'd sell the number - coach companies like them to hide the age of their fleet - and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell that one and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell..... well, you get the idea.

In order to prevent that, DVLA now issue "non-transferrable" numbers whenever they issue a replacement for any reason, on any age of car. I guess it's a case of being easier to implement as a blanket rule than different rules in different circumstances.

That's interesting because a while ago I swapped the suffix plate on one of my cars for an age related plate with no prefix or suffix letter and I have always assumed that it was non-transferable even though the V5 does not actually say "non-transferable" on it.

david29dpo

Joe_Horner wrote: »

There used to be a nice little earner available if you had an old car (especially pre-date letter) where you'd sell the number - coach companies like them to hide the age of their fleet - and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell that one and be issued a replacement age-related one. You'd then sell..... well, you get the idea.

In order to prevent that, DVLA now issue "non-transferrable" numbers whenever they issue a replacement for any reason, on any age of car. I guess it's a case of being easier to implement as a blanket rule than different rules in different circumstances.

I think yo may be right.