Almost 13,000 drivers buy personalised number plates

Personalised vehicle number plates have brought in €15.3 million since they were introduced in Belgium in 2014 - with residents of Flanders making up three-quarters of the requests.

New figures released by mobility minister François Bellot in response to a parliamentary question show 12,956 personalised Belgian plates are now in circulation.

Flemish car drivers account for 9,153 of those, with Antwerp province coming top. In Wallonia, 2,159 cars have been fitted with a personalised registration number, and the remaining 1,644 were registered in the Brussels region.

When they launched three years ago, personalised plates cost €1,000. Since December 2015 their price has doubled to €2,000, netting a total of €15.3 million for Belgium's vehicle registration agency.

For the first year that the scheme existed, cars with personalised number plates were not recognised by some speed cameras equipped with automatic number plate recognition - allowing thousands of motorists to dodge fines for speeding. The loophole has since been fixed.