Every Driver Risks a Cloned Plate Fine as DVLA Complaints Hit a Record 11,402

• A Freedom of Information request by the RAC found 11,402 drivers contacted the DVLA in 2025 about fines or penalties for vehicle use they did not recognise, up 9% on 2024 and 93% above 2018.
• A police operation across 32 forces led to 286 arrests and 319 stolen vehicles seized, with cloned plates among the haul.
• Using a cloned plate carries an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison, while suppliers who skip entitlement checks face a fine of up to £1,000.

Innocent Keepers Are Left Proving They Were Never There

A fine arrives for a bus lane in a city you have never visited. The photograph shows your registration number on a car that looks a lot like yours. You did nothing wrong, yet the paperwork says otherwise, and the job of proving it falls on you.

That is the experience behind a record figure published by the RAC on 16 October 2026. Its Freedom of Information request to the DVLA found that 11,402 drivers got in touch in 2025 about fines or penalties relating to vehicle use they did not recognise or accept. The total was 10,460 in 2024 and 5,912 in 2018. The latest number is a 9% rise in a year and a 93% jump on 2018, which means the problem has almost doubled in seven years.

Spread across 365 days, 11,402 contacts works out at roughly 31 every day. Each one is a motorist opening a letter they should never have received.

The DVLA adds a caveat the RAC reports in full. The figure includes possible misreads of registration numbers by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras, and cloning is only one possible explanation. Some cases come down to organisational or customer errors, such as a wrong registration number being entered. So not all 11,402 are victims of criminals. Even so, the direction of travel is clear, and the RAC says cloning has become the “menace of modern-day motoring”, in the words of head of policy Simon Williams.

How a Cloned Plate Gets on the Road

Cloning means a fraudster copies the registration number of a genuine car and fixes it to a similar vehicle, so any camera that catches the offender points straight at an innocent keeper. The RAC says plate suppliers should ask for a V5C logbook plus proof of identity and address before they make a set. Illegal suppliers do not bother, and the RAC says some legitimate ones do not always check either.

Auto Express reports that a BBC investigation found reporters could buy cloned plates for £40 in eight minutes at a market. For the price of a tank of fuel and less time than a tea break, a stranger can borrow your identity on the road.

Road Safety GB, writing about the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety (APPGTS) report in December 2025, says 34,455 suppliers are registered with the DVLA to produce number plates. That is a big supply chain to police, and the RAC says some of those businesses do not always check who is buying.

Ghost Plates and the 90 Million Daily Camera Reads

Cloning has a close cousin. Ghost plates are built to be unreadable by cameras, using transparent film, raised non-compliant digits or altered characters. The RAC says they can help drivers evade speeding, red light, clean air zone, congestion charge, bus lane, private parking and smart motorway enforcement.

The scale of the network they are fighting is large. The country has roughly 18,000 ANPR cameras capturing about 90 million vehicle reads a day, which is around 5,000 reads per camera every 24 hours. The APPGTS report, which the RAC supports, found that as many as one in 15 vehicles could carry modified or non-compliant plates. That is close to 7% of the cars around you on a motorway run. The same report found that 41% of 1,000 licensed taxis checked by Transport for London had non-compliant plates, and a later round of about 800 checks put the figure at 38%, according to Road Safety GB.

We covered the camera side of this story earlier this month in our report on ghost plates and the new AI cameras built to spot them. The new RAC numbers show the other side: when a car evades the system, the penalty can land on someone else.

Police Raids Show the Organised Side of the Trade

Auto Express reported on 16 October that a week-long operation by a coalition of 32 police forces, backed by the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), targeted gangs running “chop shops” and fitting stolen cars with cloned number plates. Officers acted on 100 warrants, made 286 arrests and seized 319 stolen vehicles worth an estimated £2.6 million. That averages about £8,150 a vehicle.

Eighteen of the arrests related to chop shops, where cars are stolen, usually to order, and stripped for parts that are shipped overseas or sold on the black market. More than 300 stolen parts worth over £100,000 were found. Other arrests covered drug and weapons possession, violence and attempts to leave the country to avoid court.

Assistant chief constable Sarah Grahame, the NPCC vehicle crime lead, said the operation showed what happens when “police forces and our partners work together, sharing intelligence”. She also said: “Vehicle crime is not a low-level crime with minimal consequences.”

The wider theft figures offer a small crumb of comfort. Almost 55,000 stolen cars were reported to the DVLA in 2025, 11% fewer than in 2024. Thefts are falling while cloning complaints climb, which suggests criminals are putting more effort into disguising the vehicles they already have.

What the Law Says and What Happens Next

Ministers have argued that the law already bites. In a written answer to Liberal Democrat MP Dr Al Pinkerton on 30 June 2025, Department for Transport minister Lilian Greenwood said it is an offence, with a fine of up to £1,000, to supply a number plate without checking that the buyer is entitled to use the registration number. Using a cloned plate on a vehicle is also an offence, and on conviction it can bring an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison.

The RAC now notes that the government intends to toughen the penalty for the offence. The APPGTS goes further. Its recommendations include a ban on 3D and 4D plates, points for the use of an illegal plate and seizure of the vehicles of repeat offenders. The RAC backs a wider overhaul of the plate system, with better supplier checks, higher security standards, better enforcement tools for police and updated ANPR cameras.

The DVLA says it is “cleaning up the register, strengthening compliance and enforcement”. No date has been given for any change to the penalties.

What Drivers Can Do Today

Nobody can stop a thief copying a plate, but some steps cut the risk and the damage. When replacing your own plates, use a supplier that asks for your V5C logbook and photo identification. A seller who waves you through with no paperwork is breaking the rule the RAC says suppliers should follow.

If a penalty notice, parking charge or debt letter arrives for a trip you did not make, read the photograph carefully. Compare the make, model and colour with your own car, and keep the notice along with proof of where your vehicle was. Then challenge the notice with the organisation that issued it and report the cloning to the police. The RAC publishes a car cloning guide, and RAC members can call its 24/7 Legal Helpline on 0330 159 1446.

For anyone whose only contact with the DVLA is a tax reminder, the 11,402 figure is a reminder that a registration number is a kind of identity document. It sits on the front and back of your car every day, photographed by a network of cameras that does not check who is behind the wheel. Until the penalties change and plate suppliers face tougher checks, the safest habit is to treat any unexpected fine as worth a second look rather than a quick payment.

Sources:

• RAC: Reports of cloned vehicles rise to record high as law-breaking drivers look to evade enforcement cameras
• Auto Express: Mass police ‘chop shop’ raids shine light on car theft and cloning scourge
• Road Safety GB: “Explosive” report lays bare the threat posed by ghost plates
• Westminster Brief: Vehicle Number Plates: Fraud