From 01 September 2001 a new registration system is in place for all new vehicle registrations in England, Scotland and Wales. The format is AB51 CDE. In this example, AB indicates the original area of registration or Local Memory Tag, 51 is the Age Identifier and CDE are random letters or Random Element. For reasons best known to the DVLA, or an organisation above them, they have seen fit to change the letters that have represented the original area completely! Like before, I and Q will not be used on regular registrations, but a change means that Z can be used in the three-letter suffix.

Until 31 August 2001 modern registrations in England, Scotland and Wales were made up with a single letter suffix or prefix representing the year of registration based around 01 August each year, this has now been changed to 01 March and 01 September each year, followed by one to three digits, then prefixed or suffixed by three letters, the last two of which designate the area of original registration.

Since 'H' year it has been possible to purchase personalised registrations by using the year letter followed by the digits 1 to 19 followed by any three letters (except I, Q and Z). This also applies to the digit groups 100, 200 etc and 111, 222 etc. The digit group 666 is not allowed on this scheme ;) The prefix letter can currently be chosen from A-D and G-Y. In these cases, obviously, the table below will not necessarily indicate the original place of registration of the vehicle.

In Northern Ireland there are one to four digits and no year prefix or suffix letter.

It seems that the older two letter plus one to four digit registrations used to follow the same patterns as the areas listed below. With the apparent exception of GPO, MAN & USN (this source is old - 1982, but seems still to apply generally) the last two letters of the registration prefix or suffix denote the original registration office or area (nowadays).

'X' does not seem to be used as the initial pair of letters in my list. Remember that 'I' and 'Z' only appear in Northern Ireland registrations (shown at the end of the list - though it seems that they also used to appear in Eire when this list was produced). Eire registrations are now quite different and quite independent, but I have included them for the sake of old registrations.

Also remember that 'Q' does not appear in registrations except for the year suffix or prefix where the true age of the vehicle cannot be satisfactorily proved.