Free Traffic Legal Advice

What you re obliged by law o do (as you were not "he person keeping he vehicle) is to provide the police with "any information which is in your power to give and which may lead to identifying the driver."

I suggest the only information you can give them is the details of the lease company.

It would be interesting to learn what documentation they have to show that you were driving. Unless anybody was with you when you were not driving and made a statement that you were, I can't really see what they might have.

The lease company can only say who they believe was keeping the vehicle at the time. They cannot say who was driving it. As above, it may be worth checking with them what they have told the police.

I think you have just two choices: plead guilty or plead not guilty.

If you plead guilty not much you can say will significantly alter the sentence so in that respect it doesn't matter whether you attend court or not. The matter of the NIP is not mitigation (i.e. it does not lessen the seriousness of the offence). As I said, it is a reason why you should not be convicted.

If you plead not guilty you will have to convince the court that the efforts made by the police to trace your details so as to be able to serve your NIP within 14 days were not good enough. Whether that would succeed is anybody's guess, but I think it may not.

There is a big difference in the financial penalty. You face a fine of half a week's net income. This will be reduced by a third if you plead guilty. You will also pay a surcharge of 40% of that fine. But prosecution costs are the big difference. A guilty plea will see you pay about £90. Failure following a trial will see you ordered to pay around £650. Three points will be imposed in either eventuality.

A lucky escape. Still endured a ferocious bollocking from my wife at the time!

I fancy you won't be doing that again!   

I read it like this:

Received a Conditional Offer of a Fixed Penalty in July 23
Received a reminder in August 23.
Ignored both
Received an SJPN, including a written charge dated 3//10/24 and received that same day.

Apologies this is a Single Justice Procedure notice. It mentions the offence as the 3rd June and arrived by email on the 3rd October 2024.

Definitely 2023? If so, what was the date on the SJPN?

Did you hear anything about this between receiving the fixed penalty offer and the SJPN?

I may be wrong, but I don't believe an SJPN can be served by e-mail. As well as that, other material needs to be served with it (such as the evidence the police will rely on to convict you). Did you get this as well?

In a further twist I have just tried to plead online and it is telling me "Your case has already been reviewed - contact the Contact Centre if you need to discuss it"....

Have you checked you driving licence record to see whether you have been convicted in your absence?

Yes, magistrates can fine you up to £1000, plus "victim surcharge" plus prosecution costs. It's the cheapest option.

Indeed. Although the likely fine (provided you plead guilty) is a week's net income (capped at £1,000) then reduced by a third for your guilty plea. The surcharge is 40% of the fine and costs are around £90. So the most you will pay (if you have an income of £1,000pw or more) is a bit over £1,000.

However, the deal breaker for most people is the endorsement code (MS90) that goes with the conviction. This is particularly nasty as far as insurers are concerned and will see considerably increased premiums for up to five years. For most people this is a far greater penalty than the fine.

I would be able to include with my NIP response copies of accommodation bookings and petrol receipts to evidence that we were holidaying.

There's no point in doing that. All the police want to know is who was driving. If you say you do not know, they will prosecute you for failing to provide the driver's details. There is no "might" about it as suggested above. That evidence may help if you decide to defend that charge but the police will not consider it; that will be done in court. There is a statutory defence (i.e. one written in law) which says this:

"A person shall not be guilty of an offence...if he shows that he did not know and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained who the driver of the vehicle was."

It's a tough hurdle to clear (if it was easy everybody would do it) and the court will want to see evidence of the "diligence" you employed to find out who was driving. From your description that might be difficult for you. Whilst there are occasional success stories, I think defending that charge more often results in failure than success.

I would suggest the pragmatic way to deal with this is to obtain the photographs as suggested. They are very unlikely to help you identify the driver but the main reason for seeing them is to make sure nobody else could. If, say, you accepted you were driving but a photo showed clearly a male driver, the police would probably ask you to "reconsider" your nomination and it would be best to avoid that.

Then decide between you who was most likely to have been driving, return the form and take the course that is almost certain to be offered.

It's an unfortunate consequence of this legislation that often sees a far harsher penalty imposed for telling the truth than perhaps declaring something that you are not certain is true. There are various schools of thought that argue the legitimacy of this course of action. Strictly speaking, if you don't know who was driving you should say so, but with the potential consequences of doing that being so much harsher, it is little wonder that most people take a pragmatic approach.

So long as the police do not suspect one of you is trying to gain an undue advantage (for example if one of you was on nine points and you named the other just to avoid him or her facing a "totting up" ban) and so long as the photographs do not clearly suggest your nomination is incorrect, the overwhelming likelihood is that your case will simply make its way through the "sausage machine" without trouble.

I don't think it's fair for the court to implement a conviction on my name since I never received the letter in the first place...

If you are convicted (whether by way of a guilty plea or having been found guilty following a trial) you will have a criminal conviction recorded against you. The court has no discretion over this.

Have you asked your employer whether a conviction for this offence (which will become "spent" in 12 months) will have any effect?

In any case, from what you've said, I don't believe you are guilty of an offence under s144A:

That’s when the MIB stepped in and sent me a letter saying I didn’t have insurance on ABC123D.

Now, I’ve received the Single Justice Procedure Notice for not having insurance on the old plate, ABC123D,...

But you didn't need to insure a vehicle bearing the reg'n number ABC123D if, for no other reason, (presumably) there was no vehicle bearing that mark.

Section 144 says this: "For the purposes of this section a vehicle is covered by a policy of insurance if the policy of insurance is in force in relation to the use of the vehicle."

Well yours was covered by a policy of insurance because you had a policy which covered its use.

What you may be guilty of is some sort of offence under the legislation covering registration marks, but that's not what you have been charged with.