Rego plate not automatically transferred with a vehicle

[gjm 3258]

Some months ago I bought a diesel-engine 'bus'... Well, an SUV. Similar size to a small bus, perhaps.

Given the impending end of silver of black plates, and the colour of the bus being dark blue, I thought I'd treat myself (and the bus) to a little vanity update.

So - go to the website, and order the plates.

Today, I received an email saying "We have reviewed your order and during our checks we noticed that you don't hold the entitlement to the Plate" and "Plate ownership is separate to vehicle ownership, even though you may have the plates on your vehicle, this doesn’t mean you automatically own the plates."

The plates have been on the vehicle for over 20 years, and through the hands of five owners. After a little investigation I find that the vehicle was first registered on 14/07/2004, and the plate change took place a day later on the 15th. As such, I suspect someone bought a personalised plate, applied that to the vehicle when buying it new, but didn't retain it when selling the vehicle on.

I thought that in that circumstance the ownership of the plate would transfer with the vehicle. Seems quite bizarre!

[aja540i 1906]

I had the same thing, you just have to have the plate on the vehicle for a certain amount of time then you can claim the entitlement, seems weird but not too much of a hassle.

[gjm 3258]

9 minutes ago, aja540i said:

I had the same thing, you just have to have the plate on the vehicle for a certain amount of time then you can claim the entitlement, seems weird but not too much of a hassle.

I'd hope 20 years would cover it!

I've gone to Licensys who (apparently) can help resolve this.

[KwS 2425]

IIRC the vehicle has to be in your ownership for something like 6 months, before you can apply to have the ownership of the plates transferred to you. Its nothing to do with how long they've been on the vehicle.

Personalised plates are owned separately to the vehicle, since you can transfer them between vehicles and can keep them for life.

BTW, you've already missed the cutoff for buying black/silver plates, that was the end of Oct. If you buy them now you can only get them in black with white text, unless you already applied for the entitlement to have black/silver made (before Nov), in which case you have until the end of Nov to have them made.

[gjm 3258]

2 hours ago, KwS said:

IIRC the vehicle has to be in your ownership for something like 6 months, before you can apply to have the ownership of the plates transferred to you. Its nothing to do with how long they've been on the vehicle.

Personalised plates are owned separately to the vehicle, since you can transfer them between vehicles and can keep them for life.

BTW, you've already missed the cutoff for buying black/silver plates, that was the end of Oct. If you buy them now you can only get them in black with white text, unless you already applied for the entitlement to have black/silver made (before Nov), in which case you have until the end of Nov to have them made.

Application for black/silver was in before November.

What is interesting is that payment was taken at the time but it took two weeks for me to be told the plates weren't mine and as such they couldn't fulfil my order (yet).

Given the plates were applied to the vehicle 20 years and 4 or 5 owners ago, I wonder who is deemed to own them now? (I don't recall how long I've owned it.)

[KwS 2425]

7 hours ago, gjm said:

Given the plates were applied to the vehicle 20 years and 4 or 5 owners ago, I wonder who is deemed to own them now? (I don't recall how long I've owned it.)

I guess that comes down to who before you, owned it longer than the required threshold and transferred the entitlement. if no one has, its probably still with the owner that got the plates 20 years ago.

I bet there are a lot of cars out there with plates that arent owned by the owner of the car, since anything thats been made "euro" etc but still govt issue digits is technically now a personalised plate and cars get sold with those regularly.