"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

But once there would be far more offices, each with its own mark(s): now
they've merged the marks so you cannot tell so accurately where a car was
registered.

True. Then again, it had become quite meaningless anyway with large-scale
commercial registrations or with garage chains registering vehicles in their
head office area before shipping them to their salesrooms.

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

Yes, Yorkshire is an oddity in the new system, in that the Yorkshire
registration district only covers South and West Yorkshire (YA to YO being
Leeds office and YP to YY being Sheffield office). For some reason East and
North Yorkshire are lumped in with Teesside and Tyneside as the North
registration district, split into three offices (NA to NM at Newcastle, NN
to NT at Stockton and NU to NY at Beverley).

And of course so many cars have personalised numberplates these days that
you often cannot tell anything about a car's age or place of "birth".

Whoever decided that '0' should represent March registrations and '5'
October? What happens if, at some time in the future, they decide to use
every month as a registration month?

I'd better shut up or you'll be thinking that I'm as obsessive as my mate
the walking look-up table ;-) Oh, too late...

I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing! Especially from someone who has the
registrations table saved in a Word document!! ;-))

Have a Happy New Year, Martin.