A North London lifestyle journalist reads about Prince William’s three personalised number plates and adds up what three cars would cost an ordinary Londoner in permits, charges and despair

Three Cars, Three Plates

The London Prat reports that Prince William has ordered three personalised number plates: NOTYET for the Aston Martin, because he is waiting to be King; NOTHARRY for the Range Rover, because he is avoiding his brother; and DISTASTEFUL for the Bentley, because he disapproves of most things. The piece is a joke about royal patience. But as someone who writes about how Londoners live, my first reaction was purely practical. Three cars? In London? Where on earth does he park them?

For most Londoners, owning one car is an act of financial courage. Owning three would require a trust fund, a garage and a very forgiving relationship with the borough parking department. So I decided to do the sums.

The Permit Problem

Start with parking. Across much of inner London, parking on your own street requires a residents’ permit, and many boroughs now charge more for larger, more polluting or second and third vehicles. A household that wants several permits can find the price climbing steeply with each additional car, and in some areas a third permit is either very expensive or simply not available. A large, older, thirsty vehicle can attract one of the highest permit charges on the list. An Aston Martin, a Range Rover and a Bentley parked on a residential street in Camden would cost a small fortune before anybody turned an ignition key. The council would also, I suspect, send a letter.

The Charges That Follow You Around

Then come the city-wide charges. The ultra low emission zone, which now covers all of Greater London, charges a daily fee for vehicles that do not meet its emissions standards. Most modern cars comply, but plenty of older or high-performance vehicles do not, and owners of those pay every day they drive. On top of that, driving into the central congestion charge zone during charging hours costs a daily fee that has risen over the years and was set to rise again from the start of 2026, when electric vehicles also began losing the exemption they had previously enjoyed. Even the most virtuous electric Roadster, should one ever land in London, would now be paying to enter the centre.

Add insurance, which in London is generally higher than in most of the country because of theft and accident rates. Add fuel or charging. Add servicing, tyres, the occasional fine for driving through a bus lane that was not a bus lane last month. Add the near certainty that at least one of the three cars will be scratched by a delivery van on a narrow street in Kentish Town.

Why Londoners Are Giving Up Cars

The result, for many households, is a decision to give up driving altogether. Car ownership in inner London has long been lower than in the rest of the country, and many younger Londoners now treat a car as something to rent occasionally rather than own. My own street in Tufnell Park has more bicycles than cars, more cargo bikes than vans and at least one resident who has replaced a car entirely with a trolley for the weekly shop.

That shift has real benefits: cleaner air, quieter streets, less congestion. But it also has costs, especially for people who need a car for work, disability, childcare or caring responsibilities. A plumber in Islington cannot carry a boiler on a bus. A parent with three children cannot easily do the school run on a cargo bike in February. For them, the rising cost of driving in London is not a lifestyle choice. It is a tax on necessity.

The Personalised Plate As A London Statement

In that context, a personalised plate in London is an especially loud statement. It says not only that you own a car, which in some parts of the city is already a declaration of wealth, but that you have money left over to decorate it. Drive around Knightsbridge or St John’s Wood and you will see the plates: initials, nicknames, business names, attempts to spell words with numbers. They are the London equivalent of a gold watch. Very few of them would survive a parking permit application in Hackney.

What NOTYET Means In Tufnell Park

If ordinary Londoners were to adopt the Prince’s approach, our plates would read rather differently. NOTPAID, for the car with three outstanding parking tickets. NOSPACE, for the car circling the block at eleven at night. ULEZPAID, for the old Volvo that costs its owner a daily fee to visit her mother in Enfield. And, for most of us, simply NOCAR, which is the plate London now issues by default.

The Prat’s joke works because the royal plates are so extravagant. But the real London joke is that even one ordinary car has become a luxury here. You can find more of my writing about the cost of living in the capital on my author page, where I am currently working out whether it is cheaper to own a car in London or to hire a chauffeured horse. Early figures favour the horse.

A Neighbour’s Verdict

My neighbour, a retired bus driver who has lived on our street since 1979, still owns a car, a small red hatchback that he drives once a week to the big supermarket and once a month to see his sister in Barnet. He showed me his parking permit, his insurance renewal and his last service bill, and asked whether it was worth it. I did the sums for him. He looked at the total for a long time and then said that it was worth it for his sister. Then he said that if he were a prince with three cars, he would sell two and buy his sister a house. I think that may be the wisest thing anybody has said about the monarchy all year.