New research has found that nearly a quarter of Brits don’t understand how number plates work.

In the UK, number plates are updated twice a year, this occurs in March and September. On September 1 this year, the new ‘75’ plates will be released – but it seems a huge percentage of motorists will not know the meaning behind the update, according to a survey from Go.Compare car insurance.

The comparison site asked over 2,000 Brits about their understanding of the UK number plate system overall – and whether they understand the significance of the letters and numbers. The results revealed that 24 per cent of Brits overall claim they don’t understand how number plates work, and 37 per cent of respondents say they don’t know what the first two letters of a number plate mean.

Brits aged 25-34 are the most clued up when it comes to number plates, with just 19 per cent saying they don’t understand how they work.

The current UK registration format is two letters and two numbers followed by three letters. The first two letters are known as a 'Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) memory tag' and identify where in the UK the vehicle was registered – for example, a number plate that starts with “CA” will have been registered in Cardiff.

The two numbers are known as the 'age identifier'. The first number indicates whether the car was registered in March or September, and the second number identifies the year the car was made – so ‘25’ indicates March 2025, while ‘75’ is September 2025.

The last three letters at the end are random. So for example, a car with the number plate CA75 ABC is a vehicle registered in Cardiff, in September 2025.