Private plates: "non transferable registration"

[skoda_fan]

Ok, controversial I know as I'm guessing most on here will think that this is a subject for people with more money than sense and it's all a bit naff, and I tend to agree. Reason I raise it is the V5 for my Octavia is marked "non transferable registration". I've always wondered what this means and guess it's to do with the previous owner having a private plate on it which he transferred off before I bought the car, which was then reallocated its original reg by the DVLA. Curiosity finally got to me after several years and I've raised it with the DVLA. This is their reply: "It may help if I explain that you may transfer a private registration to this vehicle but once this is on the vehicle it will not be able to be removed. I am sorry I have not been able to provide a more favourable response".

I have asked for further explanation, but it seems to me someone in these circumstances could spend money on a plate and the transfer to the car go ok, but then find it cannot be transferred off when the time comes (ok I know you're all saying more fool them!). Just seems a massive pitfall for the unwary that's not mentioned on the DVLA website nor any of the plate dealers I've skimmed through. Luckily for me it's all academic, but this could be a massively devaluing feature on an expensive/ high class motor.

[keef]

That must be wrong!

The non transferable refers to the current plate, not any you may put on it.

[Jamie]

As above. Had loads of logbooks with that statement on. Also put private plates on such cars and taken the private plate off again. It just means the original plate it came with can't be taken off. Once your private plate is removed it would go back to the reg that is non transferable 

[Kiltox]

That’s bullshit from DVLA as said. 

Most often, they make a plate non transferable if you plate rape a car - ie take its original reg off onto retention.  They issue it a new dated reg and make it non transferable so you can’t keep doing it. 

[Mally]

Wot he said.

Someone in the past  has removed your cars original plate. Thus the plate now on it is non transferable.

 

I  think.

[skoda_fan]

That's what I thought, guys. Even then I don't really see the point of making a modern style meaningless plate non-transferable as it's unlikely anyone would want to transfer it, though I suppose it's just a logical extension of what Kiltox describes above. What's more I have just transferred a private plate off another car and onto retention, the car has been reallocated its original reg and the V5 makes no mention of "non transferable".

How do I tell the DVLA they're talkin bollocks? I do actually have an eye on a plate for it, but as I don't plan on keeping the car indefinitely I don't want to risk wasting money. Seems this whole subject is a minefield where the DVLA just make up rules on a whim as they go along.

[Kiltox]

2 minutes ago, skoda_fan said:

That's what I thought, guys. Even then I don't really see the point of making a modern style meaningless plate non-transferable as it's unlikely anyone would want to transfer it, though I suppose it's just a logical extension of what Kiltox describes above. What's more I have just transferred a private plate off another car and onto retention, the car has been reallocated its original reg and the V5 makes no mention of "non transferable".

How do I tell the DVLA they're talkin bollocks? I do actually have an eye on a plate for it, but as I don't plan on keeping the car indefinitely I don't want to risk wasting money. Seems this whole subject is a minefield where the DVLA just make up rules on a whim as they go along.

They won’t change the non transferable status of its current plate, but putting another on it won’t mean you cant get it back off. 

[keef]

They used to allow you to transfer/sell plates that were allocated when you sold a plate off a car, but they stopped this when people just kept selling the replacement plate.

As to telling DVLA they are wrong: don't bother.  They never admit to being wrong, even if they are.

[Mally]

Yes you cant make the existing plate into a personal one.

But you should be able to put your personal plate on.

[skoda_fan]

Everything you're all saying was my understanding of it and I was expecting just to receive confirmation of this from DVLA. I understand that you can't turn a reallocated original plate into a "private" plate and the hypothetical reasoning behind this. But didn't know that any other reg that is subsequently transferred onto the vehicle ALSO becomes automatically non-transferable, which is what they seem to be saying. 

[Kiltox]

5 minutes ago, skoda_fan said:

Everything you're all saying was my understanding of it and I was expecting just to receive confirmation of this from DVLA. I understand that you can't turn a reallocated original plate into a "private" plate and the hypothetical reasoning behind this. But didn't know that any other reg that is subsequently transferred onto the vehicle ALSO becomes automatically non-transferable, which is what they seem to be saying. 

They are wrong. 100%. 

[HillmanImp]

My mate had a non transferable plate on his Integra type R. However when I looked it up a couple of years ago the reg was on a Vauxhall Vectra. Is it the plate behind the one that was on the car that was non transferable? 

[UltraWomble]

This all started when people began to plate rape cars and bikes in a big way - vintage stuff was issued with an age related plate and then this (in the dark dark days of long ago) would in turn be plate raped.

Quite quickly the DVLA realised this was a thing and that they themselves could be making a mint flogging plates themselves. So began the "non transferable" shizzle.

As a carte blanche (and because: DVLA logic) this was applied to any vehicle that underwent a reg transfer - if you put a private plate on the original number became non transferable ( you couldnt sell it on) but you couls still put on a private plate, then transfer that on in due course subject to the applicable fees.

Possibly the best one was the chap that plate raped  BSV891 from the Morris 1000 to end up with 1AN as an age related non transferable number.

Someone somewhere in the DVLA must have been laughing there arse off at that.

 

Of course this means there are modernz with "non transferable" PE51 LXE and shit numbers, but I doubt anyone loses much sleep over that.

[quicksilver]

I could be wrong but I recall reading that the bus operator National Welsh was responsible for age-related plates being made non-transferable after they took the piss. They had two old driver training buses with pre-suffix registrations, transferred them onto newer coaches to hide their age and got new A-suffixes issued, then immediately transferred those to other coaches, got more new A-suffixes and repeated the process again and again. After doing that 18 times or so, the DVLA must have got fed up with processing the transfers and declared all new issues non-transferable to prevent such shenanigans. One of these donor buses apparently still exists, having had 18 different registrations in a few months!

[Isaac Hunt]

2 hours ago, skoda_fan said:

Ok, controversial I know as I'm guessing most on here will think that this is a subject for people with more money than sense and it's all a bit naff, and I tend to agree. Reason I raise it is the V5 for my Octavia is marked "non transferable registration". I've always wondered what this means and guess it's to do with the previous owner having a private plate on it which he transferred off before I bought the car, which was then reallocated its original reg by the DVLA. Curiosity finally got to me after several years and I've raised it with the DVLA. This is their reply: "It may help if I explain that you may transfer a private registration to this vehicle but once this is on the vehicle it will not be able to be removed. I am sorry I have not been able to provide a more favourable response".

I have asked for further explanation, but it seems to me someone in these circumstances could spend money on a plate and the transfer to the car go ok, but then find it cannot be transferred off when the time comes (ok I know you're all saying more fool them!). Just seems a massive pitfall for the unwary that's not mentioned on the DVLA website nor any of the plate dealers I've skimmed through. Luckily for me it's all academic, but this could be a massively devaluing feature on an expensive/ high class motor.

I would be thinking that someone you spoke to is balking tollocks and speak with forked tongue.

i’ve put cherished plates on cars and taken them off, never seen the ‘non transferable’ label appear.

My understanding was that of the OP.  If you transfer an original Reg off a car, the car may well be allocated with a non transferable number.  If it was a dateless Reg that was removed, the car would get a replacement ‘non transferable dateless reg’  I’ve seen that happen and normally the Reg is of some shite combination that would have very limited appeal (although if the 1AN tale is a true one lthen PMSL if it is true) If you subsequently apply a cherished Reg, the non transferable Reg gets put on ice to be re-allocated when the cherished Reg is taken back off.

mind you, the rules can be changed by those who make the rules whenever they want.

i’ve just had a fill of it this eve.  My lad bought a car in 2016.  In 2018 he put his ‘plate’ on it.  In late 2019 he sorned the car a put it up for sale.  Finds a buyer, so the new buyer taxes the car. We then dive on-line to process the VRN to retention and I says ‘not poss on-line, please call’.  The lady says ‘you can’t do it on-line because the car has spent some time ‘in the trade’ in it’s life.  WTF.  She say, you need to fill out a V317 and sent the form in with a cheque.  A cheque !!.  My lad has never had a cheque book in his life, so that would be a right feck about for him.  Fortunately, I still have a cheque book.   So I go to print the form.  My printer won’t print until I put a new colour cartridge in, even if I just want B&W.  So I feck off down to the supermarket and get a colour cartridge, fit it, then print the form in b&w.  

So what should have been a 2 min job has taken the best parts of 4 hours elapsed time.   A fair bit of which was also finding my cheque book.  I could have sent him down the Post Office for a Postal Order.......furkinnhell, now that is retro, proper old skool. 

i can only think that his car has not been continually taxed or sorned in the last five years....although it has for the last 3 years 3 months.  

Previously i’ve been well impressed with the online Transfer capability, tonight i’ve been ‘effin and jeffin’ big time

[Split_Pin]

It very likely means that the car started out with a personalised number plate at first registration, which as yet nobody seems to have suggested. Therefore when the car was sold by the original owner or the personalised plate otherwise removed, a standard registration number had to be created. This happened when my dad bought a personalised number plate far enough in advance of ordering his new car that it never recieved an '02' plate and the private number was recorded at first registration. Subsequently he has bought the car then transferred his own plate over which takes about 2 weeks so he runs the car with a normal registration number during that time.

My Audi Cabriolet has a non-transferable number, I have no concerns about removing my private plate for whatever reason in the future.

Glad you find it 'a bit naff' OP,  just as well I won't be doing it, I'll pass the paperwork to my personal assistant to complete. I couldn't be seen to be 'uncool' on these pages of course.

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, quicksilver said:

I could be wrong but I recall reading that the bus operator National Welsh was responsible for age-related plates being made non-transferable after they took the piss. They had two old driver training buses with pre-suffix registrations, transferred them onto newer coaches to hide their age and got new A-suffixes issued, then immediately transferred those to other coaches, got more new A-suffixes and repeated the process again and again. After doing that 18 times or so, the DVLA must have got fed up with processing the transfers and declared all new issues non-transferable to prevent such shenanigans. One of these donor buses apparently still exists, having had 18 different registrations in a few months!

do you know the final registration number of those 2 buses?

would be fun to shove it into my tool and see how it handles that! LOL

I also wonder how it worked in NI, as I know WOI4001 (GIG4834) has had a metric load of registration numbers, but i'm not sure if it was a case of milking the system like national welsh, or someone using the Model 70 to hold numbers they already owned

(I say worked past tense, as i imagine since things unified in 2014 the rules are now the same)

 

 

 

as for the main subject matter on hand, indeed as mentioned above sounds like someone at the DVLA was talking nonsense, I imagine if you contacted them again you would probably get a different response, pretty much par for the course sadly

(see @egg's adventure with his Mk12 and the DVLA for a good example! "what V62 we dont know of any V62 no i don't know why your non existent £25 cheque you sent with your non existant V62 was cashed")

as mentioned a vehicle can have a non transferable registration, but if you put a personal registration on the vehicle its not suddenly locked to that vehicle

for example 

lets say I have a vehicle lets say REV451R, then lets say I bought the private plate 1LEG, then transferred that to my vehicle, 

then lets say I transfer 1LEG to another vehicle, the old vehicle would simply get its original registration number of REV451R back

but lets say I transfer REV451R off that vehicle, (Ha fat chance) and the age related plate I got was INV70R and non transferable, 

and then I decided to transfer 1LEG to that vehicle, it is not suddenly locked to that vehicle, simply once I remove 1LEG from the vehicle it would be given "INV70R" again, its this new "base" registration that cant be transfered

now lets say I have an unregistered vehicle that I registire and immediately give it the plate 1LEG,  so it would have a private plate from the get go, then eventually lets say I transfer 1LEG off this vehicle, that vehicle would then be given a age related plate non transferable, since it had no previous plate before the private plate,

hope that makes sense  

 

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

My Jaguar was initially registered with a K plate, but had a private plate put on it when it was still fairly new. Some years later the private plate was removed and put on to another car. The DVLA re-issued the original K plate to the car, but marked it 'Non transferable.' Some years further on, the same private plate was put back on to the car. The private plate is not marked non transferable and can be removed and put on to another car. If I was to do so, it is highly likely the DVLA would re-issue the car with the original K plate which would again be non- transferable.  As stated by others, it is to prevent 'plate rape'.

[keef]

10 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

would be fun to shove it into my tool and see how it handles that! LOL

Does it show a different date of first registration when you do this?

KRW794 was originally ROL471M, but DVLA insist it was first registered in 1977 not 1974 which it obviously was to get an "M" plate!

[LightBulbFun]

4 minutes ago, keef said:

Does it show a different date of first registration when you do this?

KRW794 was originally ROL871M, but DVLA insist it was first registered in 1977 not 1974 which it obviously was to get an "M" plate!

interesting KRW794 does not show any previous registration numbers (nor does ROL871M show up in my tool), im guessing it has worn KRW794 for a long time?

as for the date of first registration, I suspect that to be an artifact of when it that vehicle was transitioned from Buff log books and council offices to V5's and the DVLC (I dont think its anything to do with the vehicles number plate)

I have noticed it with a few invalid vehicles here and there as well with similar date of first registration discrepancies, 

[keef]

5 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

interesting KRW794 does not show any previous registration numbers (nor does ROL871M show up in my tool), im guessing it has worn KRW794 for a long time?

as for the date of first registration, I suspect that to be an artifact of when it that vehicle was transitioned from Buff log books and council offices to V5's and the DVLC (I dont think its anything to do with the vehicles number plate)

I guess KRW794 was transfered to the car in 1977, but your comment about the date buff log book was transferred makes sense, so it could have been soon after first registration.

BTW: You are too bloody quick and picked up my post before I had time to amend ROL871M to the correct ROL471M, but I doubt that is on any records either.

[LightBulbFun]

8 minutes ago, keef said:

I guess KRW794 was transfered to the car in 1977, but your comment about the date buff log book was transferred makes sense, so it could have been soon after first registration.

BTW: You are too bloody quick and picked up my post before I had time to amend ROL871M to the correct ROL471M, but I doubt that is on any records either.

Yeah, i'm not sure how far back my tool can go, I have seen it display number plate changes going back to the 1980s IIRC

but depending on circumstances iv had plate changes not show up on it even if they happened fairly recently

out of curiosity how do you know its original number plate? (sadly ROL471M does not show up either)

[keef]

16 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

Is this not more likely to be a typing error rather than a "wrong" date? 9 hit rather than a 0?

[LightBulbFun]

3 minutes ago, keef said:

Is this not more likely to be a typing error rather than a "wrong" date? 9 hit rather than a 0?

Nah because the BPK-H block is not from August 1970 (plus if it was it would ba J reg not H reg ) 

and heres another such example 

[keef]

12 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

out of curiosity how do you know its original number plate? (sadly ROL471M does not show up either)

 

[keef]

7 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

Nah because the BPK-H block is not from August 1970 (plus if it was it would ba J reg not H reg ) 

Ok. A 7 rather than a 6? 1979 rather than 1969?

[LightBulbFun]

1 minute ago, keef said:

Ok. A 7 rather than a 6? 1979 rather than 1969?

nope  

before the BPK-H block was the BPE-H block of Model 67's from February 1970

 

August 1969 would of been the YPK-H block  (the first of the H reg Model 67's)

 

[Isaac Hunt]

Just watching Salvage Hunters Classic CArs.  Their Ovlov Nozama is on reg SFF235.  Now my book tells me FF was is a Merionethshire Issue, so probs not a massive volume of cars registered in this part of the UK.  My other book tells me SFF sequence was never issued.  This tells me SFF235 could be a non-transfereabke reg, issued when the original dateless plate was removed.

[skoda_fan]

Yes I think most age related plates issued to cover plate-rape and latterly made non-transferable are from remoter areas of the country where they still have a quantity of plates unissued back in the day. Incidentally the DVLA have clarified my original query:

"I have clarified matters for you from our support department and the vehicle could have a cherished number assigned to it and that cherished number can be removed in the future. It is the plate that is deemed as non-transferable that could not be removed. 

I apologise for the confusion regarding this."

This means we were all right all along and I have created this thread for nothing?. Nevertheless it has confirmed that Autoshiters  are on my wavelength and I need not have worried about seeming nerdy.

[Cavcraft]

9 hours ago, Isaac Hunt said:

Just watching Salvage Hunters Classic CArs.  Their Ovlov Nozama is on reg SFF235.  Now my book tells me FF was is a Merionethshire Issue, so probs not a massive volume of cars registered in this part of the UK.  My other book tells me SFF sequence was never issued.  This tells me SFF235 could be a non-transfereabke reg, issued when the original dateless plate was removed.

Didn't watch the programme, but imported vehicles were issued with various sequences of plates, for some reason many Lambrettas for example were issued with 'TU' as the last two letters, and I've seen quite a few imported vehicles with 'UX' and I think 'FO'.

 

Also, if you get a vehicle back on the road that's slipped off the DVLA system when they updated it years back, if you manage to obtain the original number they won't let you transfer it. Seen a number of bikes and scooters with 'good' registrations and the plate dealers are usually the first to enquire, then disappear into the ether when they find it's non-transferable.