Sources and licences
Every number on this site, and where it came from.
A figure you cannot trace is a figure you should not act on. This page lists each thing the site publishes, the body that publishes the underlying data, the exact dataset or API name, the licence it carries, how often it changes at source, and how often we go back and compare our copy against it.
Last reviewed 30 July 2026. Where a source is not connected yet, it is marked as such in the table and explained further down, because a gap you know about is worth more than a gap that has been papered over.
The source table
11 data domains, each against its publisher
Scroll the table sideways on a narrow screen. Every dataset name links to the publisher's own page for it, so you can check the figure at source rather than taking ours.
| What it produces | Publisher | Dataset or API | Licence | Publisher updates | We re-check | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speeding bands, fines and disqualification ranges | Sentencing Council for England and Wales | Speeding (Revised 2017) guideline, with the approach to fines | Open Government Licence v3.0 | Only when the guideline is revised | Twice a year, against the guideline history page | Connected |
| Company car appropriate percentages and benefit charges | HM Revenue and Customs | 480 Appendix 2, with the published rate policy papers | Open Government Licence v3.0 | At each Budget, taking effect on 6 April | Before 6 April, and on any announcement | Connected |
| Driving licence information codes and categories | Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency | Driving licence codes, and driving licence categories | Open Government Licence v3.0 | Rarely, and without notice | Twice a year | Connected |
| Endorsement codes and penalty point ranges | Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency | Penalty points (endorsements) | Open Government Licence v3.0 | When a code is added or amended | Twice a year | Connected |
| Euro emissions limits and the dates each stage applied | Publications Office of the European Union | The directives and regulations themselves, on EUR-Lex | Reuse permitted under the Commission decision on reuse | Only when a new stage is adopted | On any new stage | Connected |
| Road tax rates and the bands behind them | DVLA, published on GOV.UK | Vehicle tax rate tables | Open Government Licence v3.0 | At each Budget, taking effect on 1 April | Before 1 April, again in October, and on any announcement | Connected |
| Clean air zone classes, standards and daily charges | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with each zone operator | Driving in a clean air zone, and the Drive in a Clean Air Zone service | Open Government Licence v3.0 | When a zone changes class, boundary or charge | Quarterly, and within a week of an announced change | Connected |
| Petrol and diesel pump prices used in running cost figures | Department for Energy Security and Net Zero | Weekly road fuel prices, accredited official statistics | Open Government Licence v3.0 | Weekly, on a Tuesday, for the week from the previous Monday | Weekly, on release | Connected |
| Fleet size, fuel mix and vehicle age used on the data pages | Department for Transport with DVLA | Vehicle licensing statistics | Open Government Licence v3.0 | Annually in May, with quarterly updates | At every release | Connected |
| Insurance group rating and the security suffix | Thatcham Research, with the ABI Group Rating Panel | Group Rating, and the vehicle risk data pages | Not open data, so only the published statements are quoted | Continuously, as models are rated | Twice a year | Connected |
| Typical garage prices for common repairs | No public body publishes this | Ranges compiled from published garage price lists | Not applicable, so it is labelled as ours | Not applicable | Twice a year, against fresh published price lists | Compiled by us |
Two things are worth reading off that table. First, nearly everything here comes from five public bodies, which is exactly why it can be free. Second, the rows marked as not connected or waiting on access are the rows a competitor would quietly fill in anyway, so they are the ones named most plainly.
The licence
What the Open Government Licence actually permits
Nearly all UK public data is released under the Open Government Licence version 3.0, which the National Archives publishes on behalf of the Controller of His Majesty’s Stationery Office. In plain terms it lets anyone copy the information, publish it, pass it on and adapt it, and use it commercially, including inside a product like this one. It is the reason a site can publish the whole of the vehicle tax table without charging for it.
Two conditions come with that. You have to acknowledge the source, using whatever attribution statement the publisher specifies or the standard one if they do not specify one. And you must not suggest that the publisher endorses you or the way you have used the data. Both are easy to meet and both are met on every page here.
What the licence does not do is move any responsibility for the figures onto the publisher. DVSA and DVLA publish the record. How that record is presented on this site is our work, and so is any error in the presentation of it. If a number here is wrong, the fault is ours to fix, not theirs.
The licence also does not cover personal data, and a single vehicle’s history can identify a person. That is one of the reasons an individual report on this site is never published to search engines: the whole per-registration route is set to noindex and blocked in robots.txt, deliberately, even though indexing it would bring traffic.
Attribution
The statement we carry
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains DVSA and DVLA data. Crown copyright and database right.
The first line is the standard statement, and it sits in the footer of every page on the site rather than only on this one. The second names the two agencies directly, because a reader deciding whether to trust a figure should be able to see which agency stands behind it.
Any Plate Check is not endorsed by, affiliated with or approved by DVSA, DVLA, the Department for Transport or any other government body. We read their published data, nothing more.
Gaps
Sources that are not connected yet, and why
Each of these would improve the site. None of them is going to be filled with a guess in the meantime.
Reliability by make and model
No public body publishes a reliability figure at marque or model level. What circulates instead is survey data from panels that select themselves and warranty claim rates from companies with a product to sell, and every one of them rests on a choice about which years and which variants to count. So the field does not exist on the make and model pages, and those pages say why rather than leaving a gap that reads like an oversight.
Insurance groups by vehicle segment
Neither the ABI nor Thatcham publishes a mapping from a vehicle segment to a group band, and neither publishes what the security suffix letters mean. The insurance groups page therefore carries the mechanics of the rating and labels the letter meanings as industry convention rather than dressing them up as an official definition.
Historic first year tax tables
GOV.UK publishes the current vehicle excise duty tables and withdraws the old ones, so there is no source for the first year rate a car registered in 2019 actually paid. The calculator therefore shows no first year figure for a car registered before the years held here, rather than uprating an old rate into a guess.
Repair costs, and why there is no official source
No government body publishes what a UK garage charges for a set of brake pads or a cambelt. There is no dataset to cite, so the price ranges on this site are compiled from published garage price lists and labelled as ours rather than dressed up as official. They are ranges, not quotes, they are re-compiled twice a year, and they are not a substitute for ringing two garages.
Vehicle valuations are the same problem without the workaround. There is no public dataset of used prices, so the site does not publish a valuation at all. Modelling one and calling it a valuation would be inventing a number, which is the one thing this site is built not to do.
Reuse and corrections
Common questions
Can I reuse the figures from this site?
The underlying government figures are yours to reuse under the Open Government Licence v3.0, straight from the publisher, and the table on this page tells you which publisher and which dataset. Our own writing, the repair price ranges we compiled and the way the site presents things are not covered by that licence.
Why is a source listed as not connected?
Because nobody publishes it. Reliability by model and a segment to insurance group mapping are the two that come up most, and neither exists as a citable figure. The affected pages say so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.
What happens if a government page moves?
Every dataset in the site carries its source URL, and a broken link is treated as a data fault rather than a cosmetic one. If you find a link on this page that no longer resolves, telling us is genuinely useful.
If a link here is dead
Government pages move, and when one moves the figure behind it usually moved too. Send the dead link to hello@kerbwise.co.uk and it will be chased rather than swapped for a search result.
What is not in here at all
Outstanding finance, insurance write-off categories, stolen markers and V5C document checks are not public data, so they appear in no row above. A free check cannot cover them, and the terms of use say so in as many words.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.