The Lion's Share

Brighton businessman, Dave Day, founded the city's chain of Golden Lion pubs. So, when he came across the number plate MRL 10N, seven years ago, he couldn't resist the opportunity to display it on his chauffeur-driven Bentley.

'Mr Lion' is well-known around the town and is more than happy to allow tourists to have their photo taken with his highly distinctive car.

Unfortunately, the plate is illegal due to a typographic point of order. So far, Dave has received an on-the-spot £60 penalty and threats of further action because, as he freely admits, he has arranged for the letter 'L' to be moved slightly to the right so the registration reads 'MR L10N'.

And the problem with this is? "Misrepresented number plates can cause problems for automatic number plate recognition cameras," says a spokeswoman for the DVLA.

However, not all vehicles on the road actually use the current, approved font, which was introduced in conjunction with the 'new-style' registration format in 2001. Older vehicles may still display their original wider and more rounded registration characters. Some may even have reversed-out white characters on a black background. More significantly, it is perfectly in order to employ 'motorcycle-style' plates, where the registration is arranged on two lines.

If the cameras are capable of dealing with all these variations, then how are they not able to distinguish 'MRL 10N' from 'MR L10N'? Perhaps the authorities should provide a detailed explanation of the problem before any more of these seemingly trivial cases attract publicity.

"We've had nine murders in the city in the last year," concludes Mr Day. "You would think the police have got better things to do than chase around after my number plate."

Coincidentally, our photographer, Stan Thompson, snapped the offending vehicle outside The Grand Hotel just recently.

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