Locating a Vehicle Owner Using the Number Plate
Posted: Wednesday, September 29, 2010
by James Lee
Simply Registrations
Would you like to know how to use a registration number to track the owner of a motor car? You may have been told that only the police and the DVLA are able to obtain this information. This guide will explain the rules regarding access to private 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 may have a personal meaning to an individual or a member of their family. Alan Jones sees a car go past him with the personalised number plate 96 AL. He is interested to get in touch with the owner of the car registered as 96 AL to discover if the owner is interested in selling the number plate.
If your reason for contacting the owner of a vehicle is primarily to ask if they would like to part with their number plate, then it is not good news. This would not be viewed as essential enough for the DVLA to release 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 vehicles and their owners in Great Britain is held by the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) at their headquarters in Swansea. This information is protected by the Data Protection Act.
So in which 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 vehicle did stop but gave you bogus information?
Both of these situations may suggest you have reasonable cause' to obtain otherwise protected information for the purpose of tracking the owner of the car that hit you. You would need to have the correct registration mark for the vehicle you wanted to track in order to correctly start the process.
Another example may be if you were the victim of a crime and the police did not want to investigate. Some deception cases are not deemed to be important enough to investigate, especially when the crime only occurred because of the victims own naivety. If you happened to obtain the registration number of the fraudsters vehicle you could attempt to get hold of the vehicle owner 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 complete DVLA form V888 Request by an individual for information about a vehicle.
DVLA Form V888 is available for download at the official website of the DVLA. Just search one of the major search engines for the term DVLA form V888'.
Just remember, you are not supposed to use this form to track the owner of your ideal personalised registration plate. That would surely not be classed as reasonable cause' to release such sensitive data into the public domain.
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