UK Highways Trial Exposes Thousands of "Ghost Plates" Evading ANPR Cameras

A new camera system being trialled on motorways in south-east England has detected thousands of illegal registration plates, offering the first large-scale evidence of how drivers are systematically evading the UK's automatic number plate recognition network. The findings, revealed by BBC Panorama, suggest that so-called "ghost plates" and cloned plates are far more common than previously understood.

The trial involves technology developed by MAV Systems, one of the main suppliers of ANPR equipment in the UK. At a test site just outside London near the Dartford Crossing, the new cameras logged an average of more than 1,000 ghost plates every day over a period of several months, according to the programme. Two further sites have been operating for close to two years.

Detection rates at those longer-running locations illustrate the scale of the problem. Near the M25, the number of ghost plates recorded daily has climbed from roughly 1,000 to nearly 2,000. At a third site near the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, the system is flagging more than 400 a day. These figures relate only to a handful of trial cameras, implying that the true national total could be substantially higher.

The UK operates one of the world's largest ANPR networks, with around 14,000 camera sites capturing some 100 million number plates every day. The system underpins enforcement of speed limits and low emission zones, and is also used by police to track criminals. Many experts now believe it is struggling to keep pace with the tactics employed by drivers determined to avoid being identified.

Two distinct methods are at the centre of the problem. Cloned plates involve at least two vehicles carrying identical letters and numbers, with only one of them legally registered. Ghost plates, by contrast, display the correct details for the vehicle they are attached to, but are manufactured using reflective materials that are difficult or impossible for most ANPR cameras to read.

To the naked eye, both types of plate appear entirely normal. The deception only becomes apparent when infrared camera technology attempts to capture the registration. The new MAV Systems camera tested in the trial is capable of identifying and reading ghost plates that conventional equipment misses.

The consequences of this evasion are not abstract. Families who spoke to Panorama described how road deaths involving illegal plates had devastated their lives. Sharon Gannon's son, Jason Wallis, was killed in a crash in Buckinghamshire in 2023. He and his brother-in-law, Lewis Baker, were riding motorbikes at high speed when both crashed into a car; the car driver was unhurt.

Baker survived and was later jailed for 15 months for dangerous driving. In court, he admitted using a device to hide his number plate from public view, and said he and Wallis had ridden at high speed on more than 100 occasions. "It has broken us all," Gannon said of the crash's impact on her family.

A second case, from 2025, saw 81-year-old Graham Slinn killed on a pedestrian crossing when a car bearing cloned plates struck him at high speed. The driver, 20-year-old Cain Byrne, had no licence or insurance and had inhaled nitrous oxide minutes before the collision. He was identified only after police reviewed hours of CCTV footage, one camera capturing the moment he fitted the illegal plates to his car. Byrne was jailed for 11 years and six months for causing death by dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and driving without insurance.

Slinn's daughter, Nicola Timmis, described cloned plates as a "gateway drug" that emboldens drivers to take escalating risks. "It seems like it's harmless, but then one thing leads to another, leads to another, and before you know it, it's somebody dead," she told Panorama, adding that it is "not a victimless crime."

Tony Porter, a former senior counter-terrorism officer who has advised the government on surveillance cameras, warned that both cloned and ghost plates undermine police efforts to track organised crime. "The police need an effective ANPR system that doesn't have weaknesses [and] doesn't put the public at risk," he said.

One former government adviser told Panorama that illegal plates are putting the public in danger and remain far too easy to obtain. Filming undercover, the programme's team found that plates can be purchased cheaply and without any background checks, raising questions about how the supply chain is regulated.

The minister responsible for vehicle registration across the UK said a national plan has now been launched to establish how widespread the problem of illegal number plates is and to determine what action should be taken. The admission signals that authorities are still at an early stage in understanding the full extent of the issue.

For now, the trial camera data offers the clearest indication yet that evasion tactics are being used at scale on some of the country's busiest routes. The programme, "Ghost Plates: Drivers Cheating the Law," examines how cloned and ghost plates leave innocent motorists facing fines, debt collection threats and years of stress. It airs on BBC iPlayer and on BBC One at 20:00 on Monday 28 September, and on BBC Two in Northern Ireland.