A YOUNG motorist prosecuted for putting fake number plates on his car said he did it because he could not afford his insurance.

Jordan Glynn, 26, told a Carlisle court he bought the false plates from eBay and intended to use them for 30 days – but his plan came unstuck when the police pulled him over and ran a check on the number plate.

The defendant admitted the offence and being uninsured.

At Carlisle’s Rickergate court, prosecutor Graeme Tindall outlined how police stopped the defendant’s Vauxhall Vectra in King Street, Carlisle, on February 5 and quickly established that the number plate did not match the car.

“Mr Glynn accepted he knew about the registration plate and said the reason he did it was that it was too expensive to pay his insurance,” continued the prosecutor.

A consequence of the offence, said Mr Tindall, was that the driver of such a vehicle would potentially avoid any fines or other sanctions if the car were to be involved in offences such as speeding.

The offence could also cause the owner of the genuine registration plate to be wrongly accused of any such offence. 

Representing himself in court, the defendant told magistrates that he had copied and then used the number plate for the same type of car.

He claimed he was quoted insurance premiums that ran into hundreds of pounds per month.

“That’s even though I have been driving for eight years and have never had a claim in my life,” he said.

“I copied the plates off another vehicle of the same type because I couldn’t afford to pay the insurance. The MOT had run out, and the insurance was £250.

"I just couldn’t afford to pay them both. I planned to do it for 30 days. I copied the number plate and then ordered novelty plates from eBay."

The car was insured the previous month, he said. Nor could he afford to pay for the car’s MOT, which had expired, he said.

Magistrates told the defendant that guidelines for the offence in question stipulated that sentence should be passed at a crown court, given the level of punishment that was appropriate.

The defendant, whose address was given as Fairfield Terrace, Ossett, Wakefield, will be sentenced at the crown court on June 11.