Free Traffic Legal Advice

You have two options.

The first is to plead not guilty on the basis that you complied with the conditions of the fixed penalty by paying £100 and submitting your licence details. If the court accepts that you did then a prosecution for the same offence cannot succeed.

The second is to plead guilty and respectfully request that the court sentences you at a level equivalent to the fixed penalty. Magistrates have guidance which suggests they can do this in your circumstances:

"Where a penalty notice could not be offered or taken up for reasons unconnected with the offence itself, such as administrative difficulties outside the control of the offender, the starting point should be a fine equivalent to the amount of the penalty and no order of costs should be imposed. The offender should not be disadvantaged by the unavailability of the penalty notice in these circumstances."

Depends how much bother you want to go to. I don’t know how the argument supporting the first option would go in court. The law says

“…an alleged offender fulfils the identification requirements if—

(a)the alleged offender provides the appropriate person with identification information, or
(b)the appropriate person is otherwise satisfied of the alleged offender’s identity."

I might be a bit hard for them to argue that you did not provide identification information when they say that they received it. It seems they are treating your first attempt to fulfil the conditions as null and void since your payment was not received and hat both conditions must be met in a single attempt.  I believe it is a bit harsh to insist the identity requirement is met again when they already have it.

See what others think.

Thanks for the replies.

Apologies for the typo on date sent for Conditional offer of a fixed penalty - the witness wrote "20/112024" in the statement and I messed up trying to correct that to 20/11/2024.

New Judge - thanks you understood the key issues perfectly anyway...would definitely be interested to hear if anyone feels the possible not guilty approach would work / be worth the effort and it it fails would they come down harshly on me.

Many Thanks Andy_Foster and NewJudge

In response to your kind suggestions I had a telephone discussion with a member of the Fixed Penalty Support unit who agreed that their systems were not perfect and that their data does back up / agree with the facts I wrote the below. They also said these system / process issues were known issues and they said to fill in the forms stating the facts and only the facts. I therefore intend to fill in the forms with the facts below and plan to plead not guilty as I met the conditions of the compromise agreement like you both said.  There is obviously a risk I will catch someone at the court on a bad day, but do you think the below might work out ok and is there anything you think is wrong / should be changed or added? Many Thanks for your kind input. Guy

Fixed Penalty Notice: XXX306619039XXXX re 03/11/2024 BP7XXXX
 
3/11/2024 BP7XXXX was observed speeding at 46mph in 40 mph zone
11/11/2024 – Notice of Intended Prosecution sent to The Defendant (Registered Keeper) together with requirement to provide driver details at the time.
Before 20/11/2024 - The Defendant returned Section 172 response admitting to being the driver.
20/11/2024 – Conditional Offer of Fixed Penalty sent to The Defendant.
25/11/2024 – The Defendant attempted online payment of £100 amount in relation to conditional offer – this attempt is recorded on the Police System and was confirmed 06/05/2025 by staff at the Fixed Penalty Support Unit. There was no message at the time to say payment failed so The Defendant assumed it was successful.
25/11/2024 – The Defendant Posted Driving License Details as requested.
27/11/2024 – The Defendant’s Driving license details were received by the Fixed Penalty payment department having arrived in the post.
04/12/2024 - A letter was sent to The Defendant from Fixed Penalty Office in relation the Notice XXX306619039XXXX Offence Date 03/11/2024, thanking The Defendant for the license details (also stating Licence details enclosed) but indicating no payment had been received (no payment enclosed) so requesting £100 payment again. This is the first time The Defendant knew that payment attempt on 25/11/2024 was not successful.
09/12/2024 – The Defendant makes second (successful) online payment attempt for £100, and a receipt for this is received via email.
 
It is at this point, 09/12/2024, that the conditions of the conditional offer sent 20/11/24 had been met by The Defendant.

Factually, driving license details and Payment had been received within 19 days of the 20/11/2024 Conditional Offer being sent to The Defendant. This is why The Defendant has pleaded ‘not guilty’ – because he met the conditions on the conditional offer and demonstrably acted in good faith.

Thanks again for the help. My magistrates court date is set for next week. Have printed out ss. 75 & 78 Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, highlighted the relevant parts (which Andy kindly referred to in an earlier response) and will present a short defence referring to the law and how it says that they should not be prosecuting me as I fulfilled the conditions of the offer.  There doesn't seem to be much else for me to be saying over and above what you kindly wrote, so will keep it short.

I did note that in earlier versions of the Traffic offenders act (see below) it was a requirement that the payment and identification requirements be met 'at the same time' or 'in a single attempt' (an expression used by NewJudge, which made me look for it in the law just in case) and I suspect that their failure to 'match' my payment with identification 'at the same time' on their computer system is a legacy computer program thing which they have not yet updated since they scrapped the 'at the same time' legal requirement. I might also mention this...that it seems I'm probably up for prosecution because of a legacy computer glitch from when the requirement was 'at the same time'....though it might be a waste of breath muddying the waters....they probably only want to know if they can get away with taking my money.

I'll be practising my short speech (I assume my short defence speech is after the prosecutor has his say) and also, will practice a mitigation speech for afterwards in case my short defence fails.

Will be wearing a suit / making good eye contact etc and if anyone has any tips I'd appreciate it - have never been to court before.

Many Thanks.

........
Here is the original act the relevant line is (7) (a)(ii)

Original ACT 1988

(7)A conditional offer must indicate that if the following conditions are fulfilled, that is—
(a)within the period of twenty-eight days from the date on which the offer was issued, or such longer period as may be specified in the offer, the alleged offender—
(i)makes payment of the fixed penalty to the clerk of court specified in the offer, and
(ii)where the offence to which the offer relates is an offence involving obligatory endorsement, at the same time delivers his licence to that clerk, and
(b)where his licence is so delivered, that clerk is satisfied on inspecting the licence that, if the alleged offender were convicted of the offence, he would not be liable to be disqualified under section 35 of this Act,
any liability to conviction of the offence shall be discharged.

This wonderful forum deserves some feedback. So I attended court wanting to plead 'not guilty' with my speech practised, polished and ready to go. (thanks andy_foster your input was very helpful, and the precision of your wording is very much appreciated) They had my trial down for last on the list and after I had been waiting for nearly 3 hours the Prosecutor called me into an empty courtroom saying he wanted a chat and, didn't fully understand everything, and there might have been a mistake. I used a few one liners from my prepared defence speech during this chat. It quickly transpired that they did not want this particular trial to go ahead. Instead, it was suggested that so the matter would be resolved today, I should plead guilty, pay the £100 fine (this included a court surcharge this time, but £100 in total) and take the 3 points. This exact scenario was I think outlined by NewJudge above as a possible outcome from a guilty plea, but only if they recognised they were at fault. I then quickly went before a district judge and pleaded guilty after he had kindly explained everything to me. Glad its over due to time taken up and stress, its a good result financially but part of me would have enjoyed giving the defence speech and going for the perfect result which would have been them accepting the prosecution was unlawful. That approach struck me as being quite risky in the circumstances and at the time, so I did not pursue it. I do think the magistrates court has prior experience in processing people who have had problems paying online fines for Conditional Offers, as it was mentioned as a known issue. Many Thanks again especially to Andy Foster and NewJudge for the accurate and timely advice.