Free Traffic Legal Advice

If you are prosecuted, the first you will hear of it will be a “Single Justice Procedure Notice”.

This will ask you to enter a plea and will give you three choices:

1. Plead guilty but not attend court.
2. Plead guilty and attend court.
3. Plead Not Guilty.

If you want to make an application for SRNtE, you must choose option 2. You will have to attend court and make your application before the magistrates.

The police have six months from the date of the offence to begin court proceedings and in many areas they take all of that. If an out-of-court offer is to be made you should hear about that far more quickly, probably within a couple of weeks of the police receiving a response from the person who was driving.

Ok, I think I'll try option 2 as I don't feel like I'll be offered a FPN at 3.6 seconds…

You will know whether or not you have been offered a course or FP before you have to make your choice. You will only have to choose an option if you are not offered either of those (or you don't want to accept one).

I'm on a smallish pension so the different cost outcomes aren't very far apart anyway for the guilty options.

They will be at tleast £555 apart even if there was no fine at all. Costs will be either £95 or £650, regardless of your income (unless the court uses its discretion to award less).

I guess I can do this online and upload my pictures of the damaged traffic light?

Almost certainly not. You will have to attend court (hence Option 2).

At what point could I send my pictures to the Police to see if they would consider them?

At any time, the sooner the better.

Along with your response to the "request for driver's details" might be as good a time as any (or even before you respond, making sure you do no miss the 28 day deadline).

The common threshold for court is usually 3s into red.  But if you are offered a CoFP it would probably be wise to accept it…

No, there wouldn't be. That system is purely to deal with driver nomination.

You will have to make your representations to the police separately.

Ah, ok, will do.
Thank you

That's not a question. It's an observation with a question mark misplaced at the end of it.

At this point, you are being required by law to name the driver. The online form does not have a section for extraneous information. If you feel that there is information that might assist your cause at this stage (and I have yet to see any on this thread that in my humble opinion would), you could write to the police separately, or include a covering letter with your s. 172 response by post.