Free Traffic Legal Advice

35 in a 30 will be 3 points regardless of mitigation or winding up the bench.

Mitigation tends to be very fact specific, and for most facts, not helpful when facing a speeding charge. We offer advice and interpretation of the law based on the facts as described to us by the OP. Do NOT ask us to suggest speculative facts that might assist if you were to manage to convince the court were applicable!

If you want advice regarding mitigation, tell us what mitigation you think you have to put forward, and we will most likely tell you that it variously won't help or will make matters worse. In the unlikely event of you having some helpful mitigation to put forward, we would also advise you on that, but I'm not holding my breath.

The best that you can hope for is to respectfully invite the court to consider sentencing in line with the fixed penalty that would have been offered if you had updated your address on the V5C. They have guidelines that suggest doing so when a fixed penalty was not able to be accepted for reasons unrelated to the offence - in other words you weren't going too fast for a fixed penalty - although they may well decline because the reason you were unable to accept a fixed penalty is your own fault, and consists of two separate offences you are not being convicted of (assuming that the deal to drop the s. 172 is done) - failure to update the address on your V5C and failing to name the driver (due to not receiving the NIP due to not updating the address on your V5C).

Respond to the SJPN by pleading not guilty to both offences. In the "reasons for pleading not guilty" section say you are willing to plead guilty to the speeding offence on the condition that the "failure to provide driver's details" charge is dropped.

Before the pandemic it was necessary to attend court to negotiate this "deal". When the pandemic hit courts were obviously keen to avoid as many personal attendances as possible and arrangements were made for this deal to be accepted without a court attendance. Many courts have continued with this process but some have reverted to requiring a  personal appearance. If you make your intentions clear in response to the SJPN you may be saved a trip.

In the “mitigation” section you can explain that the reason for your predicament was your failure to update your V5C. You could then ask if the court might consider sentencing you at a level equivalent to the fixed penalty. They  have guidance which suggests they might do so in some 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.”

Of course it was your fault that you did not receive the “request for driver’s details”, but don’t ask and you won’t get.

All this assumes, of course that you were the driver at the time. If you were not all bets are off.