Why thieves are after your number plates

My day had started as it always does, with a near 40-mile round trip to school, then an hour’s walk in the pretty country park close to our home near Nottingham. As usual, I parked in the small car park and exchanged ‘good mornings’ and ‘beautiful weather, isn’t it?’ with the familiar faces I see most days – dog walkers, joggers and mums herding their kids to the village school. There was nothing out of the ordinary about my walk, which covers an undulating route on a track alongside the canal, through a small wood and past fields of sheep. Until I returned to my car, that is. 

Straight away I realised something was different, but it took a few seconds to register what it was. The front number plate was missing. Perhaps it had blown off on the school run? Then I discovered that the rear plate had gone too. Clearly, this was no coincidence or the work of a freakishly powerful gust of wind on the A46. This was theft.

Number plate theft is on the rise, with more than 53,000 stolen in the UK last year, according to figures obtained from the police by Direct Line. And that's just the ones that are reported. Though standard plates have nominal face value, they’re veritable gold to those looking to commit crimes without being caught. From speeding or parking tickets to more serious offences including theft, if your stolen plates are on the vehicle involved it means that CCTV or Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology won’t direct the police to the offenders’ door – but to yours. According to the RAC, in March 2020 1,105 drivers contracted the DVLA to report that their vehicle had been wrongly linked to offences – up from 656 in April 2019.

The thief who took my plates had some brass neck given that the car park is next to a fairly busy road, flanked by houses on one side and is a hive of comings and goings on a weekday morning. There was no damage to my car as the plates had been glued rather than screwed on, so whoever took a fancy to them had simply used brute force to pull them off. Standing in the car park, my first thought was: what on earth do I do?

As I quickly learned, the first step when you discover that your number plates have been stolen is to report it straight away, either to the DVLA or the police. While this might sound obvious, many drivers don’t see the need to record the crime if there’s no damage done to their car. But by doing so, you’re alerting the police to the fact that your plates could be used in criminal activity.

While still in the car park I dialled 101 which put me through to Nottinghamshire Police. Later, they phoned back to tell me that within hours my plates had been attached to a Mercedes which was then driven out of a petrol station without the driver paying for a full tank of fuel.

The officer also warned me to expect the likes of parking and speeding fines and that, in the worst case scenario, the plates could be used on a vehicle involved in more serious criminal activity. They gave me a crime number and suggested I let my insurance company know, in case anyone should try to make a claim against a vehicle bearing my plates that had been involved in an accident.

I needed replacement number plates, too – and fast. What I didn’t realise until afterwards was that there are no circumstances in which it is legal to drive your car on UK roads without a number plate on the front and rear – even when you’ve reported them missing to the police, you could end up with a fine of up to £1,000.

I was tipped off by an elderly chap who saw my plight in the car park that if I nipped into the service station in the village they’d be able to sort new ones for me. Fortunately I have my car serviced there so they already had proof of ownership (a copy of my V5 document from the DVLA) and had new plates made for me in time for the afternoon school run. Annoyingly these cost £40 – money that would have paid to heat my home office for about five minutes this winter or for my son’s new rugby boots

Speaking of my little boy, he thought it all terribly exciting that ‘baddies are on the loose with our plates, Mummy!’ – and especially the prospect that with the replacements fitted we might get pulled over by the police now there was a ‘local obs’ out on our registration, according to the officer I'd spoken to.

The mechanic attached my replacement plates using anti-theft screw kits, meaning they can’t just be ripped off. Although you can never completely prevent theft, experts also recommend parking your car in a garage at home or in busy, well-lit areas when out and about, ideally those with CCTV and other cars around.

But the key message is that if it does happen to you, report the crime. You're unlikely to see your number plates again, but you’ll at least have the peace of mind that you won’t be charged or even arrested for any crimes committed in a vehicle that the thieving little whatsit has attached them to.