Private Plates
Do you want to add or remove a Private Plate from your Arval vehicle?
Here’s everything you need to know
Adding your Private Plate to our vehicle
You can request to add a Private Plate to your vehicle by completing our online form. Before you start you will need your V778 Private Plate Retention Certificate or your V750 Certificate of Entitlement handy. Once your request has been reviewed, our friendly team will then be in touch with next steps and request a £24 admin fee to cover our costs.
We will process your application with the DVLA once funds are received. You will then receive an EV948 form. At this point you must add your plate to the vehicle within 3 working days. See our FAQs for more information.
Please note, as Arval are the registered owners of your vehicle, we will take temporary ownership of the plate at the end of your lease. At this point we will send you a letter of disinterest and the documentation you need to put the plate on another vehicle. For more information on this, please see our FAQs further down this page.
If you are happy with the above and wish to add a Private Plate to your Arval vehicle, please complete the webform.
Removing your Private Plate from an Arval vehicle
You can request to remove a Private Plate from your vehicle by completing our online form. We process our Private Plate retentions on the DVLA website. As the DVLA website does not enable us to change the grantee name on the V778, it will show as Arval UK Ltd until the plate is transferred onto a new vehicle. Please be reassured that we have no interest in the ownership of your Private Plate and we will send you a letter to evidence this.
The DVLA charge £80 for this service, which you will need to pay so we can process your application. We will ask for this payment once we have reviewed your request. For further information, please read our FAQs below.
Please do not book a vehicle collection until we have confirmed the plate has been retained, as the process can take up to 6 weeks.
To request removal of a Private Plate, please complete the webform.
Private Plate FAQs
The DVLA website does not enable us to change the grantee name on the V778 retention certificate. This means that it will show as Arval UK Ltd until the plate is placed onto a new vehicle. Please be reassured that we have no interest in your Private Plate and we will send you a letter of disinterest to evidence this when you request retention at the end of your lease.
We have a 5 working day day service level agreement to process the private plate application. Applications are made with the DVLA and once completed, you will have 3 working days to add the physical plate and update your insurance, as the EV948 document is only valid for 3 working days. If Arval manages your insurance, then we will update your insurance for you.
We will contact you 8 weeks before the end of lease to complete this task. It usually takes 5 working days to process the application to remove a Private Plate. The V778 retention certificate could take a couple of weeks to arrive in the post. This is because the DVLA send the certificate to us and we then forward it on to you.
You do not need to wait for the V778 retention certificate to remove your Private Plate, you can use the EV948, which we will have emailed to you when we confirmed retention.
In some exceptional circumstances, it may be necessary to process the application using a postal process and this can take up to 6 weeks due to DVLA manual processing and postage.
Please do not book collection of your vehicle until the physical plate has been changed and we have confirmed the change with the DVLA.
We have a dedicated team to manage Private Plates and we charge an admin fee to cover these costs when you add your plate. We have recently completed a fair price assessment to ensure you are charged fairly for this.
This admin fee is separate to the £80 DVLA charge that you will need to pay to retain your plate at the end of your lease. We will take this payment from you to pay to the DVLA when we process the retention application. We do not take an admin fee for the retention process.
You will need the postcode from page one and the Document Reference Number from page two. Please see below for a highlighted example:
Once the DVLA has completed your private plate application, you will have 3 working days to add the physical plate and update your insurance as the EV948 document is only valid for 3 working days. After the 3 days, your vehicle should not be driven until the plates are changed. You may also need to request a letter of authority to get a new plate made up, this can be done here.
If Arval manages your insurance, then we will update your insurance for you.
Please liaise directly with the dealer who is delivering your vehicle. If you are a company vehicle driver, please check your company’s policy on Private Plates before requesting a Private Plate is added to your Arval vehicle.
If you wish to sell your Private Plate at the end of your Arval lease, you will need to request to remove the plate first, using our online form. Once this is confirmed and you have received your V778, you will need to add the buyer’s name and address to the nominee section on the form and send it to the DVLA. The DVLA will then send this to the new buyer. There is no DVLA charge to doing this apart from postage.
Please note that Arval will remain as the grantee on the new certificate until the new buyer puts the plate on a vehicle. If this is an issue, please contact us.
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