Changing number plates.

Hi a tradesman calling at house and having spotted our Cali on drive also noticed my wife’s car reg VAI4 LFE,
Now I am seriously thinking of swapping it over to van
Can anyone tell me what’s involved for 2 car swap, and any thing to watch out for, pitfalls, such as insurance implications, warranty , costs etc
Really pleased with it, if you close one eye, how did I not notice, hahaha

You should call them up as I can only think of transferring from 1 to the other. Then one car has the number plate which was transferred and the other would go back to an age related plate but no idea if this works for a plate which is standard and not on retention.
I called them about a transfer a couple of months ago and they were very helpful.

You can do the transfer on line

Put car plate on retention - will be a fee of £80 & they will allocate a different age related plate to the car.
Once you have the retention cert, its easy to sign that number to your van.

Insurance will probably hit you with an admin fee for each change.
You will have to get new plates made up for the cars new number & reuse car plates on the van.
If your van is on finance you will have to tell the finance company.

Should have no effect on warranty or MOT.

Also worth letting your local vw dealer know as they will update the reg on the system

Ting Tong said:

Afaik you can’t keep/transfer a registration that wasn’t issued as a personalised number. So if you were lucky enough to have acquired a vehicle that was first registered with a meaningful number, it stays with the vehicle and can’t be retained or transferred.

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Sorry but that is total rubbish. DVLA do not differentiate when issuing a number as to whether its personalised or not.

General rules are that you cant put a number on your vehicle that makes it look newer than it really is.

The numbers that are none transferable relate to replacements given when a plate is taken off a car. ie if I had A1 on a 1950s car and transferred it elsewhere, DVLA would issue the car with a replacement, that replacement could be A2 . in this situation A2 would be a none transferable plate & the cars V5 would state that. It doesn't stop you putting a different plate ie A3 onto the car but just that you couldn't sell or transfer A2

Other than that for car to car transfers you can move anything to anything.

That’s great, thanks for all your comments / advice
Now just got to persuade my wife

Only possible issue you may encounter if swapping is that you can't put a newer/later year plate on a vehicle. ie if vehicle a 2017 -17 plate, not possible to put an 18 or later on.

Took a long time for VW to get my change sorted and same with Citroen on my Wife's car.

No Insurance costs on either just DVLA ones.

Be aware that occasionally the number PLATE rules change.
I was caught out when moving my personalised plate from a 2001 BMW to a 2007 Audi. Registration change went without a hitch, but the Audi failed it's MOT.
The honecombed background was discontiued around 2001 and, while acceptable on a 2001 vehicle, was no longer valid on a 2007 vehicle. Had to have new plates made up.

Very restricted new rules are now in force regarding type face and layout.

All related to NPR Cameras being able to read them.

Police are enforcing this with on the spot fines/penalty notices being issued.

If in doubt this should clarify