The 1903 Motor Car Act which came into force on January 1st, 1904 required all vehicles in the United Kingdom to display an allocated registration mark on a visible plate attached to the vehicle. The ability to identify a motor vehicle was deemed necessary to enable other road users to reports incidents to the police. Under the Act all road vehicles were taxed annually at a rate of 20 shillings per year.
The first registration marks consisted if one or two letters starting with ‘A’, and up to three numbers.
Originally County and Borough Councils were required to issue the number plates, and they were allocated specific letter combinations for their region. The first series of number plates ran until 1932, consisting of a one- or two-letter code followed by a sequence number from 1 to 9999. The code indicated the local authority in whose area the vehicle was registered.
The registration letter used by Essex were
EV – F – HK – NO – PU – TW – VX – VW - WC
Southend had its own licencing authority and used the letters HJ and JN
This system which was to last until 1974 - when the Department of Transport took over the task. In October of that year responsibility for issuing registration numbers was transferred to specialist LVLO's (Local Vehicle Licensing Offices) and VRO's (Vehicle Registration offices) run by the DVLA.
In 1920 The Roads Act was passed that made a few minor changes to the number plate system. Up until this time, there was nothing to stop authorities having two registers, one for cars and one for motorcycles. This meant that it was possible for a car and a motorcycle in the same area to have the same number plate. The 1920 act put a stop to this and ensured that all authorities had one single register for all vehicles. Also, up until 1920, if a vehicle moved from one area to another, it would lose the plate and receive a new one in the new area, the old plate being reassigned to another vehicle. It was decided that this was simply too confusing and inconvenient, so this practice was stopped by the 1920 Roads Act.
By 1963, a number of local councils had run out of registrations, even by adding extra digits and reversing them. As a result of this, the Suffix system was introduced, a letter indicating the year of registration being added at the end of the plate, which until then had comprised only 3 letters followed by 3 numbers. Thus, 1963 plates had the format AAA 111A, 1964 plates AAA 111B and so on. This was the first change to a system that had been set up in 1903 when there were far fewer cars on the roads.
The Prefix system started in August 1983. This saw the letter indicating the year moved to the beginning of the registration mark, thus doubling the lifespan of the number plate system.