At the tender age of 14 I started my first holiday job in the Gloucester County Council Vehicle and Driving Licensing Office. The appointment was in no doubt assisted by my mother being the secretary to the head honcho! The office contained card references to every vehicle that had been first registered in the county, ie having a registration mark where the final two letters were AD, DD, DF or DG. The system was that these marks were specific to the licensing authority which would keep a record of the area in which the vehicle was last taxed.
So we had large files that contained the history of ownership and recent registration information on both 'home' - ie vehicles with AD, DD, DF or DG marks - and 'foreign' cars - ie those that were originally registered outside the county. When ownership of a vehicle transferred outside our area - for example to Gloucester City (FH) - the file would be sent to the new owning authority. If the vehicle was a home number, the main card index would be updated to show where the car was now registered.
At that time there was no police national computer, so police forces around the country would ring and ask for details about vehicles. If the car was last taxed in our area we would no the name and address of the last person who had taxed it. If not, then for home numbers we could tell them who should have the details.
Prior to 1963 marks were always 2 letters followed by up to 4 numbers. Once the two letter combinations were used up then we started again from AAD 1 to AAD999, then ADD1-999, ADF1-999. ADG1-999 then BAD 1 etc. Some combinations were not used. the letter I and I think O were omitted as was Q. Anything that could be construed as naughty was omitted. I think this included the Romanian word for lesbian but that might be an urban myth.
By about 1963 many councils had run out of registrations, so 'Reverse' registrations were issued where the number preceded the letters. Glos CC certainly issued these. Even so some councils still had insufficient allocation so the year letter suffix was introduced by a few councils who issued A suffixes. Most issue B plates and I think it was universal by C. This caused a rush of work over the Christmas period so letter E was for part year with F issued in September(?) which was a quiet month.
One of my last jobs there was taking details from the files and transferring to forms that were used to input information to DVLA's computer and stripping down and packing the paper copies which went to some airfield in South Wales for storage.
I am not aware of any instance where an owning mark was lent to another authority. It would have caused difficulties with traceability if it had.
Glos CC had a policy of reserving the first 99 numbers for motorcycle registrations but the ratio was such that this resulted in a glut of 1-99 numbers. When this happened a batch would be released for general use. I remember being on the phones one day answering police calls and issuing numbers when a very small garage - in Yate if memory serves me correct - rang requesting a number, to be told it was their lucky day and I issued XDD 1 H (or whatever) to the garage, resulting first in stunned silence followed by an admonishment for issuing the wrong type of number. Having carefully explained that I did actually know what I was doing, the garage rang off. There must then have been a hasty conference at the other end as they quickly rang back and demanded another 8 numbers! They would have known that these numbers would have been seen by some as a status symbol.
Fun and games did exist. We had a colleague who wasn't the brightest button in the box. One day, when he was on phone duty, we rang in pretending to be plod and asking for ownership details of a vehicle MAF 1 A. We had made up a file showing the car to be a black and silver Cadillac owned to a Mr A Capone. Said fellow passed on the details in a straight face while we rolled around.
Happy Days!
David