DSS departmental transport officer, Gwilym Anthony was all for splitting the country into areas and running trials of all the suggested changes to see which works best. He said: 'In fleet management you run a pilot and if it works you try to take it up.'

Anthony also suggested running batches of numbers around the country until they ran out so letter changes would occur at different times in different places. 'A change to quarterly would give you four sales peaks a year but why not do away with the peaks altogether?' he said.