The History of the DVLA

In the British Isles, all motor vehicles are legally required to display a registration plate which acts as a unique identifier for that motor vehicle. Like DNA, you'll find no two dvla number plates the same. Every registration only belongs to a single car.

As there are millions of vehicles in the Uk, the info pertaining to these cars must be held on large database. This database is managed by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency additionally known as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

Car registrations were first introduced in 1903 and were issued and managed by local councils. Problems occurred when individuals sold their cars or moved out of the district, at which stage registration details were required to be transferred between county councils. It quickly became clear that this technique of tracking motor vehicles across the country was unsuitable. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1965 that the Government introduced the DVLC to take over the responsibility.

The head office of the DVLC was located in Swansea and there were 81 regional offices throughout the British Isles. These offices helped Swansea with the administration of car registrations. The DVLC also looked after other areas of road and automobile usage and was responsible for supplying details about autos to the local police forces.

By 1985 the quantity of regional DVLC offices had shrank to 53 as Post Offices became a lot more involved in the administration procedure. It was in 1985 that the DVLC was renamed to become the DVLA. Today, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency have just 40 offices across the British Isles.

During its short history the DVLA (and DVLC) has overseen 3 new registration formats. These were the Suffix release, the Prefix release and the Current Style release. All of these formats included an age identifier unlike their regional council “Dateless” counterparts.

The workload of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has increased considerably in recent times due to the boost in popularity of both cars and “Private Number Plates” – which are simply hand-picked DVLA Number Plates.