Lord Provost’s number plate S 0 is to be sold!!!

The Lord Provost’s number plate is due to be sold off under proposals to boost the council’s finances. The S 0 registration which is valued at £500,000 – could be placed on the market along with “some of the council’s most useless assets” under the plan by the Edinburgh Greens.

The S 0 number plate is currently displayed on the official BMW 7 Series saloon – currently used by Lord Provost George Grubb and is one of the most unusual number plates in the world. It was created afterEdinburgh’s civic leader missed out onScotland’s first number plate, S1 at the turn of the 20th century.

When number plates were first introduced in 1903, Scotland was assigned the prefix S. It is believed the first number plate, S1, would have been allocated to the Lord Provost’s car, but city leaders were too slow to purchase the licence. Instead, it was bought by motoring pioneer Sir John HA MacDonald. At some point the Ministry of Transport agreed to establish the S 0 Number plate, although details of the deal are unclear.

Local authorities across the UK have car registration numbers which would be of huge value on the private market. But there are only two known cases where a zero has been issued – the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow with S0 and G0 respectively. In 2008 Bonham’s valued the S 0 plate at £500,000 shortly after the sale of M1 for £330,000 and S1 for £400,000. Dundee’s TS 1 is valued at around £150,000.

The record holder is currently F1, which was formerly owned by Essex Council and was bought byBradford businessman Afzal Khan for £440,625 in 2008.

Can you think of any other registrations that have been sold recently by other councils to raise some cash?