cherish plate after cars nicked

[viper]

A mate had his Freelander pinched, the insurance paid up and declared no interest in the plate. Now the DVLA won't release his plate again for the new car for another 12 months, anyone else had a similar thing or is there away to get his plate earlier ?

[Marcos maniac]

I had the same scenario.

one of my vans stolen and never recovered, had a private plate on it and I had to wait a year to get it back.

[FourWheelDrift]

You have to get your plate seperately insured to prevent this happening. Also applies to write-offs.

[eharding]

Once the rights to the number have been returned to DVLA by your insurer, I think you've had it until they decide to release the number. The only way to be sure of retaining your number in the event of a write off is to make it very clear to the insurance company right from the time of the accident that you want to retain the rights to the number. (Not that its plain sailing from there....I wanted to retain the number from my old Rangie when it was written off in October - sentimental value, the number's been in the family for donkey's years - but because the insurers wouldn't release the engineers report which officially wrote the vehicle off, they insisted on being able to inspect the wreckage - in the end it took over two months of ar$ing about between the insurers and DVLA to get it sorted out. The experience means I haven't put the number on the new Rangie).