Number plate check
Most plate changes are somebody putting a private registration on a car they are proud of, and taking it off again when they sell. But a plate change also breaks the trail: search the current registration and you will not find what happened under the old one. The dates are what tell the two apart.
Free check first — the Pro report is the upgrade on your results page. See a sample report.
What the plate check shows
The registration and colour history the DVLA holds, with the dates that make it readable.
- Every previous registration
- Each plate the car has worn, and the current one.
- How many times it has changed
- One change over fifteen years reads very differently from three in two.
- When each change happened
- The dates, so a change can be lined up against keeper changes, a write-off or a theft record.
- Colour changes
- Every recorded colour with the date it changed, and the colour before it.
- Read against the timeline
- Plate changes appear on the report's timeline beside everything else that happened, which is where the pattern shows.
How to read it
A plate change is not evidence of anything on its own, and a report that treated it as a red flag would cry wolf on thousands of perfectly ordinary cars.
What is worth a question is a change that sits close to something else — a new plate in the same month as a keeper change and a write-off, or a colour change that nobody mentioned in the advert. A respray is legitimate; a respray the seller has not told you about invites the question of what it was covering.
Where this comes from
The DVLA registration record, read through the provenance feed as part of the Pro check.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Why would a car have had several registrations?
- Almost always private plates going on and coming off. The DVLA record keeps each one, so the history is complete even when the current plate is only months old.
- Does a changed plate hide the MOT history?
- No. MOT history follows the vehicle, and the DVSA record is tied to the car rather than to the registration it happens to be wearing.
- Should a colour change worry me?
- Not by itself — plenty of cars are resprayed or wrapped. It is worth asking about when the seller has not mentioned it, and worth reading alongside any write-off record.
- How do I transfer a private plate?
- Through the DVLA, either onto another vehicle you keep or onto a retention certificate (V778) to hold it. The car reverts to its original registration or is issued a new one.