UK number plate area codes

The area code table

Nineteen letters, each a DVLA region. This is the same table the search on this site reads, so a plate identified here is a plate the filters agree with.

Looking up one particular tag

If you have a plate in front of you, read the first letter and ignore the second. The first letter is the region; the second only said which office inside that region issued the mark, and every office in a region shares the same area.

WP and WR are the useful pair there: two different offices, one area. Whichever of the two issued the mark, the answer to "where is this plate from" is the same.

Two things this cannot tell you, and no table can. A tag beginning with a letter that is never a region code is not a memory tag at all — the plate is a prefix, suffix or dateless mark, or the characters have been misread. And a tag on a private mark says where that mark was issued, which may have nothing to do with the vehicle now wearing it.

What the second letter added

The second letter narrowed the tag to one office inside that region. Anglia had offices at Peterborough, Norwich and Ipswich, and the second letter said which of the three issued a particular mark. Regions with more offices used more letters.

For reading a plate this is a detail rather than a fact you need. The first letter is what carries the geography, and it is the level at which the region is worth anything — a mark beginning S was issued in Scotland whichever Scottish office handled it.

Letters that are never area codes

I, J, Q, T, U, X and Z are not region letters. They are left out for different reasons.

I is kept out because it is too easily read as a 1. Q is kept out because it is reserved: a Q registration is issued to a vehicle whose age or identity cannot be established — a rebuild, a kit car, an import with no clear history.

Both are useful when you are reading a plate off a photograph. A first character that looks like an I is almost certainly a 1, and one that looks like a Q is almost certainly a 0 — because neither letter can appear there.

The search uses those exclusions when you widen a pattern to cover lookalike characters: because the format forbids them, a reading that would put an I in the tag can be discarded outright rather than searched for.

What a region does not mean

DVLA closed all 39 local offices in 2013 and allocates marks centrally now. Dealers still tend to receive their own region's letters, so the correlation survives — but it is a correlation, not a rule, and it is weaker every year.

Even at its strongest it never meant more than the point of first sale. A car registered in Manchester in 2014 and sold three times since is very likely somewhere else, and its plate did not change when it moved. A memory tag is a fact about a transaction, not about a vehicle's location.

It is still worth having, because it is a filter and filters compound: a region plus a colour plus a rough year is a much smaller set than any of the three alone.

Searching by region

A region on its own is too broad to search — one region covers millions of vehicles — so it has to be combined with something else. Anything will do: a colour, a marque, a fuel, an age identifier, or a partial plate.

The region filter and a typed pattern are close but not identical. Both match marks beginning with the region's letter; the filter also limits the search to current-style plates, which is where a memory tag means anything at all. It is the tidier of the two, and it leaves the plate box free for characters you actually saw.

Common questions

What do the first two letters of a number plate mean?

They are the memory tag. The first letter is the DVLA region that issued the mark and the second narrowed it to a particular office within that region — so LP was a London issue and SA a Scottish one. They describe the issue, not the vehicle: nothing about the car, its keeper or where it is kept is encoded there.

Does a number plate tell you where a car is from?

Only where it was first sold, and only weakly. DVLA closed all 39 local offices in 2013 and now allocates marks centrally, though dealers still tend to receive their own region's letters. A car has also probably moved at least once since it was registered, and the plate does not move with it.

Which letters are not used in a number plate area code?

I, J, Q, T, U, X and Z are not region letters. I is kept out because it is too easily read as a 1. Q is kept out because it is reserved for vehicles whose age or identity cannot be established. Both help when reading a plate off a photograph: a first character that looks like an I is almost certainly a 1, and one that looks like a Q is almost certainly a 0.

What area is my number plate from?

Look at the first letter, not the pair. The first letter is the DVLA region and the second only narrowed it to an office inside that region, so NU is the North, BJ is Birmingham, CV is Cymru (Wales) and both WP and WR are the West of England. It tells you where the mark was issued, which is roughly where the car was first sold — not where it is now.

Do UK number plates have area codes?

Yes, but only on current-style plates, and only as the first two letters. A registration issued since September 2001 opens with a memory tag naming the DVLA office that issued it. Prefix, suffix and dateless marks carry no area information at all, and neither does a private mark transferred from another vehicle.

Can you search for cars registered in a particular region?

Yes, but not on its own — one region is millions of vehicles, so it has to be combined with something else. Region plus a colour, a marque or an age identifier is a search: black diesels on Scottish plates, or every Ford issued in London.

Searches to start from

• Black cars issued in Scotland
• Fords issued in London
• Red cars issued in Cymru (Wales)
• Manchester and Merseyside plates from the 73 half-year
• Diesels registered in Scotland in 2018
• Red Fords registered in London after 2020