Plate cloning hits a record — and you're the one who pays

If a police officer ever draws a Taser on you because your number plate just pinged a 'drugs and firearms' warning, you're not having a bad day — you're having a cloned-plate day. The DVLA logged 11,394 reports of cloned number plates in 2025, up 54 per cent on 2020, and almost every consequence — fines, prosecutions, sometimes a Taser — lands on the wrong person.

Cloning isn't theft. Your plate stays bolted on. Somewhere out there, on a similar make and colour, a duplicate is doing the work — running through ULEZ cameras, parking on yellow lines, or worse — and every ANPR hit, every council PCN, every police letter follows the registered keeper. That's you.

When the consequences land on you

Ben Richards-Everton, a Bradford City defender, lived exactly that scene — pulled over in a Sutton Coldfield car park six weeks after buying a Range Rover, Taser drawn, all because the plate had been cloned onto another car already flagged for drugs and firearms. The club's lawyers handled the cleanup.

Stella Roscoe in Leatherhead opened a police letter prosecuting her for fleeing the scene of an accident in Ilford — a town she's never been to. The Met confirmed her plate had been cloned. Seven months later her insurance claim was still open.

Richards-Everton and Roscoe aren't outliers. They're two of a fast-growing crowd.

A record year for cloning reports

DVLA figures published by the RAC show cloning reports climbed from 7,377 in 2020 to 10,461 in 2024 — a 41 per cent rise in three years. BodyShop Magazine clocked 2025's number at 11,394, 54 per cent above 2020. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Transport Safety estimated in December 2025 that around one in fifteen UK vehicles is wearing an illegal plate of some kind — cloned, ghost, stealth or 3D/4D. London is the worst of it: MoneySuperMarket reckons cloning-attributed fines in the capital rose 64 per cent between 2021 and 2024, the same window in which ULEZ went city-wide.

Why it's getting worse

The financial incentive. ULEZ expansion in August 2023 turned a single trip across town into a £12.50 question. TfL rescinded over 6,000 ULEZ fines in 2023 where cloning was suspected — and that's only the ones the system caught.

The supply side. A BBC investigation in 2024 found Amazon sellers shipping plates without checking ownership documents. The DVLA's own register lists 34,455 approved suppliers, plenty of them home-based, with vetting that's polite at best.

Enforcement is the plate. Frontline traffic policing has thinned out and the cameras have taken over. GB News flagged the obvious tradeoff: when ANPR is the enforcer, the plate is the identity, and a cloned plate launders the offence onto whoever's name is on the V5C.

What to do if your plate's been cloned

• Challenge fast. Contest any out-of-area PCN, NIP or ULEZ charge the moment it lands. Most issuers give you 28 days.
• Build an alibi file. Tracker data, fuel receipts, work logs, dashcam footage and timestamped photos of your plate and VIN are the evidence that wins appeals.
• Report to police. Phone 101 or use the relevant force's online portal — the force depends on where the cloned car was driven, not where you live. Get a crime reference number; councils generally need one to escalate.
• Don't change your plate. It feels right; it isn't. The DVLA discourages it, you'd lose the paper trail you need to defend yourself, and the cloned car will keep using your old number anyway.

A set of tamper-resistant screws will help with theft. Cloning is a different fight, and right now the rules are still on the cloner's side.