Police UK, what info they have when scanning car plates

1) If police drive behind and 'scan' plate numbers, what can they know about the owner

  • Vehicle details to ensure the plate matches description to prevent cloning. For example, ANPR shows registration plate XXXX XXX as "Honda Civic - Blue" and they've got a red VW in front of them, obviously something is amiss.

  • Registered keeper information covering Name, DoB and address. Note - this has absolutely nothing to do with the person actually driving the vehicle. The keeper does not even have to be legally entitled to drive. It won't give you information on any endorsements (points) or disqualifications the registered owner has. You don't even have to provide your licence details when registering yourself as keeper of a vehicle, so the licence and keeper databases do not 'talk' by default.

  • Whether the vehicle has a police history.

  • MOT and Tax status.

  • The cars registration can be cross referenced against the insurance database via ANPR. This is not automatic, but trivial to do.

can they memorise plate numbers, let's say they Didn't like driver, but there was no legitimate reason to do anything, can they run check later not bothered by anyone?

I can remember the plate of my car from 5 years ago still, so yeah, I reckon the average plod probably can memorise it.

Can they run a check at a later date? Yes, they can check your details. Including full keeper history, and full insurance database history including individuals currently insured to drive the vehicle in detail. But it won't be via the ANPR system (cause that wouldn't be automatic innit), so the ANPR part of this story is kind of neither here nor there as they could just write down anyones plate and do that.

It's all recorded and audited though, having said that the chances of ever picking out an individual officer looking up details in that way are very low unless they go on to do some good old fashioned gross-misconduct.

/r/manchester Thread