United Kingdom number plate: Ni standard

Every design of this plate 2

The same registration series, issued on 2 looks. Same format, same size; pick one to see it above.

• 

  Rear plate (yellow) default

  2001 to today

  Black characters on yellow; no flag or identifier on a Northern Ireland registration (reg 16(8)(b)).

• 

  Front plate (white)

  2001 to today

  Black characters on white; no flag or identifier on a Northern Ireland registration (reg 16(8)(b)).

Format, years and the law

Format

LLL 9999, for example ABZ 1234 (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued

Documented since 2001; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.

Vehicle class

Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, and motorcycle.

Colours

Characters #000000 Rear plate (yellow) #FFCC00 Front plate (white) #FFFFFF

Typeface

prescribed font (Sch 4 Part 1, 79 mm); mandatory · license plate fonts

About this plate

THE NORTHERN IRISH STANDARD MARK, three letters and four numbers, and the reason a British plate parser cannot be a two-letter-memory-tag parser. Unlike the Great Britain series this one encodes NO DATE AT ALL: a Northern Irish mark is dateless, which is exactly why Northern Irish marks are prized as personalised marks in Great Britain.

How the region is encoded

The three-letter group is understood to carry a district identifier in its second and third letters, one of which is always I or Z (which is why the Regulations' own examples are "ABZ 1234" and "1234 ABZ").

Legal basis and sources

1. Sch 3 Table A row 8, verbatim: 'A group of 3 letters followed by a group of 4 numbers (for example ABZ 1234, being a form of mark issued only in Northern Ireland).' https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/561/schedule/3
2. reg 16(8)(b): no flag or identifier on a vehicle recorded in the Northern Ireland part of the register https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/561/regulation/16
3. reg 2(1): 'relevant date' means 1st October 1938 in Great Britain and 1st January 1948 in Northern Ireland https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2001/561/regulation/2
4. 'Since 2014 the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) has been responsible for Vehicle Excise Duty and licensing of vehicles in Northern Ireland' https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-new-means-transport-northern-ireland/vatninmt3500

Before and after

It replaced Prefix documented 1984 to 2001