Vehicle Number Plates: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what engagement her Department has had with the British Standards Institute’s review of BS AU 145e; and what assessment she has made of proposals to ban raised 3D and 4D number plates.
Answered by Simon Lightwood
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is part of the British Standard Institute committee that has recently reviewed the current standard for number plates. The committee has put forward proposed amendments which are intended to stop the production of number plates with raised characters often referred to as 3D or 4D number plates and will prevent easy access to plates with ‘ghost’ characteristics. The proposals will also prevent suppliers from adding acrylic letters and numbers to the surface of the number, meaning any finished number plate must be flat. The proposed changes have been subject to a public consultation which closed on 13 December 2025.
The Government has set out its intention in the Road Safety Strategy to consult on addressing the growing problem of illegal number plates, including ‘ghost’ number plates.
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