Number plates

A registration can be changed on a quiet Tuesday afternoon and leave no mark on the car itself. That's why plates have earned their own set of articles here.

Everything a buyer checks hangs off the registration on the back of the car. The MOT history, the tax record and an outstanding finance search are all looked up by that number. Move the number and the thread you were pulling goes slack.

Start with what DVLA refuses to issue. Banned number plates works from the agency's own withheld list, released under the Freedom of Information Act. It's a far longer document than the news coverage suggests. It also answers the question sitting underneath: do you actually own your registration?

You don't. You hold a right to use it, and that right can move.

Then there's the situation most buyers actually meet. Buying a car with a private plate covers what happens when the seller takes their number away with them. It explains which plate the car ends up wearing and what the V5C says at each stage. It also shows how much of the history you'll still be able to follow.

The seller's half of the same deal is how to keep your private plate when you sell. It's a different job, with its own paperwork and its own ways to go wrong. So it gets a separate page rather than a chapter of the other one.

Timing is the part people get wrong most often. DVLA is plain about the order of events: you need the V778 and the new log book in your hands before the car goes. A private sale rarely waits for the post.

One thread runs through all three pieces. A plate is a claim about a car that the car itself doesn't make. So the paperwork is the only place the two are ever joined up.