New DVLA figures obtained under Freedom of Information show nearly 2.3 million private registrations have been taken off vehicles and kept, with hundreds of thousands held for a decade or more.
Britain is holding on to 2,266,352 private number plates that have been taken off a vehicle and are not attached to any car, according to new figures released by the DVLA under the Freedom of Information Act.
The data, obtained by private plate specialist RegHunters, shows the number of registrations placed on retention each year has risen by more than half over the past decade, climbing from 798,849 in 2016-17 to 1,208,657 in 2025-26. At that rate, a number plate is taken off a car and put away roughly every 26 seconds.
The figures also reveal how long these plates are being kept. Almost a third of the total, some 706,903 registrations, have been held continuously for six years or more without being put on a vehicle. More than 205,000 have been held for over a decade. At the far end of the scale, 773 plates have sat unassigned for more than 30 years, meaning they have not been on a car since 1996 or earlier.
A turning point in 2021-22
The data shows a clear turning point in 2021-22, when the number of private plates placed on retention jumped by more than a quarter in a single year. In every earlier year covered by the figures the annual total had stayed below 900,000. It has not fallen below one million since.
The cost of hanging on to a private plate
These are not unsold plates or spare stock. A registration only appears in these figures if it was on a vehicle and its owner applied to take it off and keep it. Doing so costs £80. The owner applies to the DVLA and pays the fee to place the mark on a V778 retention document, which holds the registration in their name for 10 years.
Across the decade covered by the figures, nearly 9.9 million retention applications were made, meaning drivers have paid the DVLA more than £790 million simply for the right to keep a registration off the road.
The commitment does not end there. A retention document lasts 10 years and has to be renewed before it expires. That means the 205,000 plates held for more than a decade have all been actively renewed at least once, and the 773 held for more than 30 years have been renewed at least three times.
Jon Kirkbright, Sales Director at RegHunters, said: “Nobody accidentally keeps a number plate for 30 years. A V778 retention document has to be renewed every 10 years, so those long-held private plates are not sitting forgotten in a drawer. Owners are coming back and choosing to hold on to them.
“The reasons vary enormously. People buy a plate for a car they haven’t bought yet, they hold one back when they sell their car, or they simply like a registration and want to keep it in the family. And yes, some are holding because they think a good plate will be worth more later than it is today. Plenty of buyers look at what the sought-after registrations have gone for over the years and take the view that a distinctive plate is not a bad thing to be sitting on.
“What we can say for certain is that more people than ever are treating a number plate as something worth keeping hold of.”
Media contact:
Jon Kirkbright, [email protected], 07525 846 049, RegHunters.co.uk
The full dataset, including all annual figures and the breakdown by length of time held, is published at https://www.reghunters.co.uk/britain-keeping-2-3-million-number-plates.
