Green penalties for older cars ‘fuelling rise in cloned plates’
A SURGE in illegal number plate cloning has been blamed on drivers trying to avoid paying penalties for older polluting cars.
Reports of cars being wrongly linked to fines for driving in ‘clean air’ or ‘lowemissions’ zones have shot up, suggesting more and more rogue motorists are fitting fake plates to cheat city centre enforcement cameras.
Birmingham, London and Bath have led the way on green zones. Bristol’s clean air zone will charge older cars £9 and HGVs, buses and coaches £100 from the summer. Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield and Newcastle could be next.
And as more city centres bring in such zones, the AA fears the rise in fake plates has only just begun.
Figures obtained by the Daily Mail show the number of drivers complaining to the DVLA about correspondence, fines or penalties wrongly linked to their vehicles – an indicator of their plates being cloned – more than doubled in 2019. This was the year London mayor Sadiq Khan introduced the 24-hour ultra-low emission zone, which imposes a £12.50 charge (on top of the £15 for entering the capital’s congestion zone) on older polluting cars and vans.
By comparison, illegally cloned plates can be bought online in seconds for under £30.
The DVLA had 9,384 complaints about correspondence, fines or penalties wrongly linked to vehicles in 2019, up from 4,021 in 2018.
In 2020 the figure fell to 7,400, thought to be due to traffic levels in the pandemic. Between January 1 and July 31 last year, the latest period figures are available for, it was 4,110.
Jack Cousens, of the AA, said: ‘With cities across the country introducing clean air zones, plate cloning could increase as fraudsters hope to cheat the charges.’
He urged the Government to close down offshore businesses – particularly ‘no questions asked’ websites in the Channel Islands – offering to clone plates.
Drivers looking for fake plates trawl online car sale sites for vehicles that are the same as theirs but newer, so they do not fall within pollution charges rules. They note the number plate and order a copy online.
The Mail was able to order one set of plates from a firm based in Saint Helier, Jersey, for just over £30 including delivery. A second firm allowed our reporter to order a set of plates registered to another car without asking for any ownership documents.
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