Retention of a Personalised Registration Plate

There are occasions when you may need to separate your personalised registration from your car. The usual reason is because the car is going to be sold and you don’t want lose the rights to display your personalised plates.

There are two options available when removing a registration from a vehicle. You can either transfer a registration to another vehicle, or you can apply to retain it. In this post we are going to be focussing on the latter of the two. This is often referred to as the DVLA Retention Scheme.

Applying to retain a personalised registration number is a fairly straightforward process. It is simply a case of making sure you have the required vehicle documents and correctly completing DVLA form V317 – Applying to Transfer or Retain a Vehicle Registration Number.

Please note the information contained within this post is correct at the time of writing. There were a few changes made to the Retention Scheme just over a year ago. The previous DVLA form was known as a V778/1. This has now been replaced by the V317.

To apply for retention of a personalised registration you need to have:

The V5c Registration Certificate – often referred to as a log book

The MOT Test Certificate – only applies to vehicles over three years old

The DVLA form V317 signed by the registered keeper of the vehicle

The appropriate fee – it currently costs £105 to retain a registration number

The vehicle should also be taxed although it is important not to enclose the actual tax disc with your application. The offence is ‘failure to display’ not failure to buy. If the tax disc is not correctly displayed you risk getting fined and having your vehicle crushed if it is on the road.

Your application can either be posted or taken in person to your nearest DVLA Local Office. I strongly recommend you go in person.

To find your nearest DVLA Local Office go to Google or one of the popular search engines and enter ‘find a local DVLA office’ into the search box. Even if you are not sure how to complete the actual DVLA form, take the correct documents with you and the DVLA staff will assist you. The DVLA Local Offices have V317 forms available so even if you have made a mistake you can complete a new form.

Finally, it can take between two and four weeks for you to receive your replacement V5c Registration Certificate and V778 Retention Document from DVLA Swansea. If the reason you are applying to retain your personalised registration plates is because you are selling your vehicle, it is definitely wise to plan ahead.