Tracking A Vehicle Owner Using The Registration Plate

Would you like to know how to use a registration number to trace the owner of a vehicle? You could have been informed that only the police and the DVLA are able to acquire this information. This guide will explain the rules regarding access to confidential information held on the DVLA Swansea database.

There are generally two reasons why someone may want to search for the owner of a vehicle. The first reason relates to the actual registration number. A person would like to be reunited with the registration mark of the first car or motorbike they bought.

A registration number could have a personal meaning to an individual or a member of their family. John David Firth sees a vehicle drive past him with the personalised number plate 5 JDF. He is keen to get in touch with the owner of the vehicle registered as 5 JDF to ask if the owner is interested in selling the number plate.

If your reason for contacting the owner of a car is primarily to discover if they would like to part with their personalised registration, then it is not good news. This would not be viewed as significant enough for the DVLA to disclose information to you. There are however some occurrences when information about a car or the owner may be released. The decision comes down to whether you can show 'reasonable cause' to require the requested information.

Information about cars and their owners in Great Britain is held by the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) at their headquarters in Swansea. This confidential information is protected by the Data Protection Act.

So in what situation could you have 'reasonable cause' to request information from the DVLA?

What if you were hit by a vehicle and the driver failed to stop? What if the driver of the motor vehicle did stop but gave you false information?

Both of these situations may suggest you have 'reasonable cause' to apply for otherwise protected information for the purpose of tracing the owner of the vehicle that hit you. You would need to have the correct registration mark for the car you wanted to trace in order to correctly start the procedure.

Another example could be if you were the victim of a crime which the police did not want to investigate. Some fraud cases are not considered to be important enough to investigate, especially when the crime only occurred because of the victims own foolishness. If you happened to find out the registration number of the fraudsters car you could attempt to get hold of the vehicle keeper information from the DVLA.

If having read this information you feel you may have a genuine reason to request information about a vehicle, the correct procedure is to fill in DVLA form V888 - Request by an individual for information about a vehicle.

DVLA Form V888 is available for download from the official website of the DVLA. Just search one of the major search engines for the phrase 'DVLA form V888'.

Please remember, you are not supposed to use this form to trace the owner of your ideal personalised number plates. That would surely not be classed as 'reasonable cause' to release such confidential data into the public domain.