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The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has revealed that it made more than £6m last year selling access to the names and addresses of motorists to private sector companies such as wheel clamper, bailiffs and debt collection agencies.

That represents a 27 per cent increase on the £5m the DVLA earned from selling vehicle ownership details to the private sector the previous year.

The DVLA currently charges an administration fee of £2.50 to anyone who can demonstrate "reasonable cause" to receive the information from the vehicle database. Once the request is approved a company can submit a car registration number to find out the name and address of the vehicle's owner. The practice sparked controversy earlier this year when it was revealed convicted criminals and companies that didn't even exist had been granted access to names and addresses from the vehicle database. This forced the government to announce a review of the regulations covering the release of information because of concern about the breadth of organisations that now have access to the register.

One of the issues is that "reasonable cause" is not defined in the law but a DVLA spokesman said it takes its duty under the Data Protection Act to protect the privacy of motorists "very seriously" and said each request is considered on merit. He said: "Applicants must provide as much detail as possible to support their request. Insufficient information or use of data outside the 'reasonable cause' provisions will mean refusal of the application. Members of the public are subject to more stringent checks and must provide supporting evidence such as police reports and their insurance details."

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has drawn up a blacklist which includes registration numbers such as AA55HOL (asshole) and D055ERR (dosser).

Thousands of people - like TV DIY star Tommy Walsh - pay for personalised plates, which are legal. But some form rude words such as M1 BUM (my bum) and HO03 KER. The banned list was released under the Freedom of Information Act. The ban covers plates with religious connotations like JE55USS, references to terrorism such as HA06MAS (Palestinian group Hamas) and regs which could be traded by far right groups like AU55WTZ (Nazi death camp Auschwitz) and GO05TEP (goosestep).

It comes after H8 GAY was withdrawn last month because it can be read as "hate gay". Even shorter Number Plates from the 1930s such as AR53 are being withdrawn. The DVLA said: "We'll withhold any plate that causes offence or embarrassment."

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s (DVLA) 100th auction of personalised registrations, which ended on Saturday evening, smashed the UK records for the most money paid for a vehicle registration plate and the total sum raised from a registration auction.

The registration ’51 NGH’ was bought for a total of £254,000, beating the previous record of £231,000 paid for the registration ‘K1 NGS’, which had stood for 15 years. In total, three numbers sold at the auction entered DVLA’s all time top ten table of best selling registrations including ‘1 OO’ which sold for £197,000 and ‘MR51 NGH’ which went for £101,000.

Another plate attracting a lot of attention was ‘RU55 ELL’, which was bought by Oxfordshire property developer, Russell Harrison of Russell Harrison plc, for £78,500.

Commenting on his successful bid, Russell Harrison said: "I’d been waiting for five years for ‘RU55 ELL’ to come up. A friend told me about the auction and I made up my mind straight away that I was going to get it. I want to use the number to promote my business and I think I might put it on my new Rolls Royce."

The DVLA auction raised a total of £6.5 million from the sale of 1200 distinctive registrations, beating the previous auction record of £5.4million, set earlier this year.

Damian Lawson, DVLA Auctions Manager, commented: "We thought that some of the marks would attract a lot of interest but this level of response is exceptional. This record result is even more incredible when you consider that we reduced the number of lots offered for sale by 250 for this auction."

The DVLA’s 100th auction isn’t just a story of big numbers however. Two cousins, Robert and Gerard Calise, from Sheffield and London respectively, who had never met and were not even sure of each other’s existence, were both drawn to the auction by the number plate, CAL 15E. Gerard prevailed with a bid of £1100 but then approached his only competitor for the number and discovered the family link.

"I thought I might be the last Calise in Britain and wanted the plate to keep the name in the family. I was amazed when this man sat right in front of me and started bidding! His father was my hero when I was a boy and I’m absolutely delighted to discover that he is still alive and living in Sheffield," said Gerard Calise.

His cousin Robert added: "I lost the plate but gained a cousin! We’ll definitely be getting together after the auction. There’s so much to talk about."

Another successful bidder, Carl Elsby from Northampton, who is a Liverpool supporter, showed a lot of confidence in his team when he purchased ‘F4 CUP’ for £11,200 the day before his team played their semi final against the competition favourites, Chelsea. "I’m hoping to turn up to the FA Cup final with this number on my car," Carl stated.

The youngest winner at the auction was six month old baby Devon Lalani, whose parents, Phil and Katrina bid £10,000 for the number ‘D3 VON’. "Well we’ve got his 18th birthday present sorted. We’ve just got the other 17 to worry about now," said father, Phil.

The 101st DVLA auction of personalised registrations will be held at Tankersley Manor, Barnsley, South Yorkshire on 27th, 28th and 29th June.

After an impressive showing in March, UK car registrations in April have turned out to be disappointing. 163,216 new cars were registered, a 9.1% fall from the figure for the same month last year.

"March was a better than expected new car market, which has not followed through into April," says Christopher Macgowan, Chief Executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. "Consumer confidence has suffered across all sectors of the economy in recent months, and new car buyers may well have been affected by increasing household costs, and the breaching of petrol's £1 per litre barrier in some areas. Perhaps it is not surprising that eight out of the top 10 best sellers fall into the supermini and lower medium segments."

The April figures mean that total rolling-year registrations (in other words the figure over the twelve months up to whenever you're looking at the figures) have fallen below 2.4 million for the first time since September 2001. Similarly, the SMMT has revised its forecast for the whole of 2006 down to 2.35 million units.

The share of the overall market occupied by diesel cars continues to rise. In April 2005 it stood at 36.1%, but last month it reached 37.1%. The SMMT predicts a 38% share for diesels for the whole of 2006, rising to 40% in 2007.

The government announced plans last year to develop a national network of thousands of cameras that will automatically scan car Number Plates and check them against police databases. Police forces will keep that data in a "live, searchable system" for two years, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

The Acpo guidance states: "This period of retention is to facilitate the searching of that data on a case-by-case basis, should a crime committed during the deployment come to light during that two-year period. In exceptional circumstances there may be operational grounds to justify retention of ANPR data beyond the two-year period."

Home Office minister Paul Goggins said the Acpo guidance complies with all the relevant data-protection legislation.

He told MPs this week: "This document covers the European Convention for Human Rights. Data Protection, the Regulatory Investigative Powers Act 2000 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 relating to the police use of ANPR (excluding speed enforcement devices) and is applicable to all police forces in England and Wales."

A £15m pilot of the technology is currently underway although the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has been criticised in the past for providing the police with large numbers of incorrect records and data. The new strategy lays out plans for a national network of ANPR-enabled cameras and a national centre to analyse the intelligence collected, and police claim it will help them drive criminals off the roads.

You have probably seen them: the curly letters, the strange colours and the creative use of screws to make plates look better. Now, the Police has had enough, and are launching a campaign against drivers who use customised plates.

In the UK, Number Plates have strict rules as to the shape, colour and spacing of letters on the registration plates on cars. There are dozens of companies who will supply you with plates that use a different typeface. These plates, known as "show plates" are often augmented by adding black screws or yellow stickers, in order to "help" the look of the custom Number Plates , so the plates will read something in particular.

The police have recently started using OCR - Optical Character Recognition - systems, connected to a database. These systems can spot drivers who do not have insurance on their car, if the vehicle is insured or not, and a handful of other offences. The OCR system is heralded as the next big step in automotive crime fighting, but the problem is that the cameras can't read Number Plates that use non-standard lettering.

"This may mean that the days of the fancy or dirty plate are numbered", noted an AA motoring trust spokesman.

The trust said stiffer controls on plate suppliers has forced criminals wanting to "clone" cars to steal plates from existing vehicles. Innocent motorists could be saddled with fines and accused of speeding and other offences as a result. The trust, which said there were 14,176 plate thefts last year, advised car owners to report thefts to the police.

Paul Watters, head of roads and transport for the trust, warned of the dangers of ignoring such thefts. He said:

"You may never know that your car has been cloned until speeding, parking and congestion penalty charge tickets arrive on the doormat. You will have great difficulty convincing the authorities it was not your car - they will demand that you prove your innocence."

The trust highlighted the case of a man who commuted into London by train but was hit with bills totalling £8,000 for congestion charge and speeding offences. The car cloned with his vehicle's number plate had entered the charge zone at least 28 times.

As many as one in 250 vehicles entering the London congestion charge zone may be using false number plates, said the trust. And more than £14m is lost annually by petrol stations from drive-offs, many involving cloned cars, it added.

Police in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire have joined forces on a project to share technology that will allow them to scan car Number Plates and automatically check them against police intelligence databases.

Derbyshire Constabulary has used mobile automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology on its traffic police vehicles since 1999 and is the lead authority on the five-year framework deal that could be extended to other east Midlands police forces. The ANPR technology cross-references various databases including the Police National Computer, local intelligence systems and DVLA systems and alerts traffic police to what are classed as "vehicles of interest" that need to be stopped for further checks. Chief inspector Paul Berry, head of the Derbyshire road policing unit, said in a statement:

"ANPR is a useful tool in helping us to deprive criminals of the use of the roads. We will continue to develop the use of ANPR in the county in order to make the roads safer for all and to combat the use of vehicles on our roads by criminals."

The value of the framework deal, which was awarded to Civica, has not been disclosed. The government is spending £15m to support ANPR development through to 2006 with the aim of developing a national network of thousands of cameras that will scan Number Plates and check them against police databases.

The trial of the technology last year ran into problems because of the poor quality of the data held in the DVLA databases but both the DVLA and police forces have since said that steps have been taken to improve it.