Millenium Registrations
Millennium registrations are also known as current or new style registrations and are the number plate system currently in use in the UK, introduced in 2001.
Millennium registrations can be slightly more complex to decipher than other types of registration, but contain more information about the registration.
The first part of a millennium registration contains information on the issuing town - each two letter combination relates to an area in the UK - for instance the combination NX covers vehicles registered in the North, specifically under what was the governance of Stockton DVLA office. SA is a Scottish registration from the Glasgow region, and LO is a London registration from the Stanmore office.
Following the two-letter combination comes a two-digit year identifier. The essential difference between prefix, suffix and millennium year identifiers, is that the year identifier on a millennium plate is a number, not a single letter, and that there are two millennium releases each year.
The dating of the millennium system began with 51 (the 5 denoting a release in the second half of the year, the 1 identifying the year itself - 2001) continued with 02 (the 0 indicating the first half of the year, the 2 the year 2002), and proceeds from there.
Following the town and year identifiers come three more letters, which are simply random and have no significant meaning.