Ontario is reverting to its original white licence plate design after an updated version featuring a blue colour scheme and a new tagline had to be pulled from circulation over readability concerns.

The provincial government began issuing the new plates on Feb. 1 but within a few weeks they announced that Service Ontario would temporarily stop issuing them to motorists after receiving complaints about their readability at night.

At the time, the government said that manufacturer 3M was working on a new “enhanced licence plate” which was expected to be available in less than three weeks.

They also said that anyone who had received one of the 49,000 new plates that had already been issued could expect to get a new one in the mail as soon as it was available.

That, however, is no longer the case.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford confirmed that the government will no longer be moving forward with the redesigned plates after putting them through “thorough testing by law enforcement and other key stakeholders.”

At this point it is unclear whether the blue plates, which remain valid, will be recalled.

“Under very specific lighting conditions, stakeholders identified visibility issues due to glare. As a result, further work is needed. As such, the Premier has decided that the redesign of the new licence plate will no longer proceed,” Ivana Yelich said in the statement.

Yelich said that approximately 145,000 of the new plates were manufactured while the government awaited final testing results.

She said that officials are currently “exploring all options” to make use of those plates “where they would be appropriate for an alternative use, such as trailers or recreational vehicles.”

Speaking during his regular COVID-19 briefing at Queen’s Park on Wednesday, Ford said that plates have “honestly not been top of mind” in recent weeks due to the state of emergency in the province. He did say that there will be no “additional cos to taxpayers” as a result of his government’s change of heart.

“Right now I am just not ready to put any more resources towards this,” he said of the new plates. “We will run through all the inventory of existing plates we have and also look at ways to use the new plates for non-passenger vehicles. We have 31 other categories of vehicles we can use the plates on.”

The government had previously contended that the new plates would save taxpayers money in the long run because they used a “high-definition” sheeting that would allow them to last longer than the old “Yours to Discover” plates.

In her statement, Yelich said that a “delamination issue” with the old plate has since been resolved by the manufacturers and that they will give the government a five-year guarantee.