About Any Plate Check
Who runs Any Plate Check
and checks its figures
In the UK, Vikas D runs Any Plate Check and checks its motoring figures against named public sources. The editorial record was last reviewed on 30 July 2026, and corrections are published when a source or its interpretation changes.
- Written and checked by Vikas D
- Reviewed 30 July 2026
Editorial policy
Five commitments
- Every figure has a named sourceWith a link and the date it applies from
- Yes
- Reference figures re-checked on a cycleBefore April, again in October, plus on any announcement
- Twice a year
- Corrections recorded on the pageThe old figure is never quietly deleted
- Always
- Paid placementNo garage, dealer, insurer or broker pays to appear
- None
- Cost to the readerNo account, no paid tier, no upsell
- Nothing
The full policy below explains each commitment. Report an error by email if a figure or source does not match.
Why it exists
Public motoring data should stay free
Tax rates, clean air charges, speeding bands and company car percentages are public information. You should not need an account or payment to read them.
Published records can answer what a car costs to tax, what a clean air zone charges, what a speeding band carries and what a company car costs its driver. Those answers remain free.
Public records cannot confirm outstanding finance, stolen status or an insurance write-off. Those limits are stated beside the figures so a public-data answer is not mistaken for a provenance check.
No registration number is required. Road tax bands, clean air zone charges, speeding guidelines, company car percentages and typical repair prices can be answered from published facts. Each page gives the source and review date.
Public data licensed under the Open Government Licence is free to reuse. There is no charge, account or paid placement.
Runs the site
Vikas D
Founder and editor
Software engineer based in London. Builds and maintains Any Plate Check, cross-checking every figure on the site against the GOV.UK, HMRC, Sentencing Council and DVLA publications it comes from.
One named publisher is responsible for the content
Any Plate Check is built and maintained by one software engineer, not by a mechanic and not by anybody in the motor trade. That shapes what the site is willing to claim. It reads published records carefully, explains what they mean, and shows its working. It does not offer a view on whether a particular car is a good buy, because no database can support that view.
The engineering matters more than it sounds. The commonest failure on a site like this is not a lie, it is a stale number: a tax band copied from a page that changed in April, a charge for a zone that moved from one class to another, a mileage rate that has not been current since 2011. Preventing that is a build problem. Every figure lives in one typed dataset with a source URL and an as-of date attached to it, the page renders both, and the build refuses to pass if a figure exists without them.
The bio above is deliberately short. What matters on a page like this is not a career summary. It is whether there is a named person who can be held to the figures and a working route to reach them. The name is here, the address is on the contact page, and every correction goes out under the same name.
Editorial policy
Five rules for figures and corrections
Every figure needs a source, review date and clear correction process. Paid placement is not accepted.
One
Each figure links to a named source
Road tax bands come from the GOV.UK vehicle tax rate tables and the DVLA V149. Clean air zone standards and charges come from the government guidance and from each zone operator. Emissions limits come from the directives themselves on EUR-Lex. Speeding bands come from the Sentencing Council guideline. Company car percentages come from HMRC. Fuel prices come from the weekly road fuel prices series published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Nothing is estimated to fill a gap. Where a figure is not published, the page says it is not published rather than modelling something plausible. Where the honest answer is a range, it is shown as a range. The data sources page lists every source, its licence, and how often it changes.
Two
Rates are checked before April and again in October
Anything read live from a government API is as current as that API. Anything held as reference data inside the site is re-checked against its publisher on a fixed cycle: all of it before the start of the tax year on 1 April, all of it again in October, and any single figure within a week of an announcement that changes it.
Each of those pages shows the date its data was last checked, and that date is generated from the dataset itself rather than typed into the copy, so it cannot drift away from the number it describes. The fixed penalty for speeding is £100 and three points, for example, and that pair is verified against GOV.UK on every review.
Three
Corrections show what changed and when
Corrections are made in the open. The number is fixed first, and then the page that carried it records what changed and when. Nothing is quietly deleted, because a reader who acted on the old figure deserves to be able to see that it moved.
If the mistake was in the reasoning rather than the number, a charge applied to the wrong class of vehicle for instance, the explanation is rewritten and the same note goes on. Where an error could have cost somebody money, it is described as that, not folded into a general update.
Four
How to report an error
Email avrdevelopers2017@gmail.com with the word Correction in the subject line. It helps to include the page, the figure as it appears, and what you believe the right figure is. A source link makes it quicker, but it is not required. Pointing at the number is enough.
Reports about a figure are read before anything else in that inbox. Expect a reply within three working days, and either a fix or a plain explanation of why the figure stands.
Five
Nobody pays to appear here
No garage, dealer, insurer, warranty provider, finance broker or breakdown company pays to be listed on this site, to rank higher in a list, or to be recommended. There is no arrangement under which a reader’s click is sold, and no figure on the site is influenced by a commercial relationship, because there are none to influence it.
If that ever changes, the arrangement will be named on the page it affects before a single link goes live, it will be marked in the copy rather than in a footer, and it will not touch the figures either way. A source that pays us cannot also be a source we cite.
Limits
Free data cannot show finance, write-offs or stolen markers
These records are held by lenders, insurers and the police. A paid provenance provider is needed to check them.
Finance, write-offs and stolen markers
Outstanding finance sits with lenders, write-off categories sit with insurers, and a stolen marker sits on a police database. None of the three is published, so no free check can read them, this one included. They need a paid provenance check from a provider that holds that data.
The vehicle condition figure
Where a report shows a condition score, it is calculated from the published test record: the pattern of advisories and failures over time, and how they cluster. It is useful for deciding what to look at and what to ask about. It has never seen the car, and it is no substitute for an inspection.
Legal, financial and safety questions
Reference pages explain how a rule works in general. They cannot account for your vehicle, your address or your circumstances, and nothing here is legal, financial, insurance or roadworthiness advice. The terms of use say the same thing in the language a lawyer would want.
Any Plate Check is operated as a sole trader in the United Kingdom by Vikas D.