We’ve been making number plates for a living since 2019. Every day at our Hounslow workshop we check V5Cs, turn away plates that aren’t road legal, and help drivers who’ve been stopped by the police or failed an MOT because of their plates. Our guides are written from that experience, so you get answers from people who deal with this every day, not from a content farm.
This page explains who writes our guides, where the information comes from, how we check it and how we keep it up to date.
Who writes our guides
Our guides are written by the PlateBoss team and led by HD, the owner of PlateBoss, who has been making plates since 2019. PlateBoss is a trading name of Homee LTD, and we are a DVLA-registered number plate supplier. That means we’re on the DVLA’s Register of Number Plate Suppliers and are legally allowed to make and sell number plates in the UK, as long as we see proof of the customer’s identity and their right to the registration.
The people writing and reviewing our guides are the same people making plates and answering customer questions in the shop and on WhatsApp.
Where our information comes from
We use two kinds of source, and we keep them separate.
- Official rules. Anything about the law, plate sizes, fonts, spacing, documents or MOT checks comes from the official source: the DVLA (including leaflet INF104, Vehicle registration numbers and number plates), GOV.UK, the DVSA MOT inspection manual and the British Standard for number plates, BS AU 145e. We link to these in the Sources section at the end of each guide.
- What we see in the shop. Tips, common mistakes and customer stories come from our own work: what customers bring in, what gets plates rejected at MOT, what the police stop people for. Customer stories are real, and we remove names and registrations to protect people’s privacy. We never invent quotes or reviews.
We don’t copy facts from other number plate websites or forums. If we can’t confirm something from an official source, we either leave it out or say clearly that it’s our view.
How we check a guide before it goes live
- Every legal or technical claim is checked against the official source on the day the guide is written, including exact sizes in millimetres, fine amounts and document names.
- The guide is reviewed by our team before it’s published, to make sure it matches what we actually do and see in the shop.
- Where the rules are unclear, or where we don’t offer something (for example, we only make standard printed motorbike plates, and don’t make plates for bikes registered before September 2001), we say so plainly.
Keeping guides up to date
Number plate rules do change, such as the 2021 update to BS AU 145e. Each guide shows the month it was last checked. We review our guides at least every six months, and straight away when the DVLA or DVSA change the rules. We only change the date when the content has actually been checked or updated.
Selling plates and giving honest advice
We’re a business and we sell number plates, so our guides link to our products where they’re relevant. But every guide is written to answer your question fully first, even if you never buy from us. We won’t tell you something is legal to make a sale. We refuse to make show plates for road use, tiny motorbike plates or anything with illegal spacing, and our guides are written the same way.
Spotted a mistake?
If you think something in one of our guides is wrong or out of date, please tell us and we’ll check it and put it right. Message us on WhatsApp, email info@plateboss.co.uk, or call into our workshop in Hounslow.
Last updated: September 2026.
