Free Traffic Legal Advice

This has come up as car insurance is up for renewal - Gf got caught by a mobile van doing 57 in a 50 in Sept 2022, letter sent in Oct. Her address had changed, so eventually current resident of her old place (a friend) informed her of said letter. She accepts she was driving the car in Nov 22, and gets fixed penalty notice in December. She pays the fine in Jan (within required timeframe) and posts her license details at the same time (letter specifically says not to post physical license). Slight error here is she didn't get proof of posting here.

She then hears nothing, but in May gets a MoJ-HMCTS refund for £100 and doesn't really know what it's about, not accompanied by any letters.
We are doing car insurance this weekend so I ask what happened with the points and go through the above details - gov.uk speeding fines checker doesn't have any points on the record. But from a bit of googling a refund usually means there is an intent to go to court (perhaps they didn't receive the license details in the post). We are going to email the department to clarify but a couple of specific questions:

1) Any advice on whether the refund, intent to go to court should have some letters to warn her about this?

2) Would the points appear on the gov.uk online checker given the incident was so long ago even if there is a pending court date?
3) Is it correct that they need to put this before a court within 6 months to prosecute? If so when does the clock start?
4) What do we say to insurers? As far as we know, she has not received a court date, no points recorded online and the fine has been refunded.

Thanks!

Thanks andy_foster!

This is all really helpful and appreciated.

To answer your questions - her friend lives at previous address and (following this incident) has been opening all mail addressed to her - we've confirmed nothing received there.

Checked DVLA website - no endorsements, which I would expect there to be if she had missed a court summons and they'd held the case without her.

We've sent an email to the fixed penalty support office today and I assume this will take a while to get a response. It sounds like we need to try and confirm whether they passed the information to a court within 6 months if they respond that they want to pursue the matter.

I think all things being equal I will put the insurance quote as no points.

Many thanks!

Given its well past the 6 months the prosecution had to commence proceedings, and there is no indication of a fine nor points applied, I think it is safe to assume no prosecution is pending that needs to be declared.

There is no possible SP30!  There is no prosecution pending, the timeout has occurred and the OP has checked their DL online to confirm no penalty points have been applied.

I would disagree.

The fixed penalty payment has been returned and the endorsement not actioned. The only course of action open to the police after that is a prosecution in court. The deadline to begin that was last March. If it had been instigated it would have been concluded by now and even if the defendant had not received any notification of the court action or of the outcome, the endorsement would be present on her driving record. It is now almost a year since the date of the offence. How long do you suggest this should be declared as "pending"?