Notice of intended prosecution - 12 points

[swaza]

Speeding offence January 2006. Initial letter received within 14 days. Informed that have 9 points but not admitted offence received NIP April 2006 and heard nothing since. How long do they have to take you to court?

Am prepared for ban but just would like to know when the hearing is likely to be or have they 'lost' it!

[oldhamfan]

Did you reiterate on the second (April) NIP that you had 9 points?

As you know you cannot be dealt with by means of fixed penalty. Take legal advice.

[swaza]

1) Received initial fixed penalty letter within 14 days for offence on 20 Jan 2006 in early Feb.
2) Took legal advice as I already had 9 point. The advice from the solicitor was to ignore the letter as sometimes the letters are lost and do not get sent out, but this could mean that I am prosecuted on 2 counts. This is the speeding and failure to reply.
3) Received reminder and ignored.
4) Received NIP notice on 14 April 2006. I phoned up as advised on the letter and followed up with a letter stating the reason I had not reply was because I had 9 points, but did not admit offence.
5) I have not heard anything back and I did not receive a relpy to my letter that I sent.

I have not received any letters since the NIP notice on 14 April 2006, nor have I been back to the solicitor. I am still waiting for a court date, how long does this usually take.

[JudgeJ]

The normal sequence of events in cases such as yours is as follows:

1. NIP, request for details of driver and Conditional Fixed Penalty Offer (FPO) is sent to registered keeper. This must be sent (but not necessarily received) within 14 days of the offence.

2. Registered keeper (with 9 points) identifies himself as driver and accepts FPO.

3. Fixed Penalty Office withdraws FPO (because latest 3 points will make driver a �totter�) and issues summons to court.

Normally, proceedings have to be started within six months of the offence.

However, as you correctly say, in failing to do (2) you have now committed a second offence by not providing details of the driver as required to do so under Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act. This offence is not covered by the fixed penalty scheme and carries a minimum of 3 points. The fact that you were not able to take advantage of the fixed penalty offer for speeding (because of your 9 points) does not absolve you from your responsibility to identify the driver. I think you were badly advised.

The original speeding offence will now be discontinued (unless there is mutual agreement between the prosecution and you to resurrect it and drop the Section 172 charge). The �start� of the six months for this offence is not so clear cut as Section 172 does not provide a time limit within which the keeper must respond with the driver�s details. It is also not usual for a separate NIP to be issued for this offence.

However, in sending a second NIP it seems that the prosecutors have sought to start the six month clock again for the S172 offence and so may believe they have until October to issue proceedings.

You need to seek proper legal advice if you do receive a summons for a S172 offence as I believe there are reasonable grounds for you to seek to have the prosecution struck out due to the time limit expiring.

[swaza]

Thanks JudgeJ

My solicitor did inform me if I admitted to the speeding offence then the not providing details would normally be dropped. I will be paying for the solicitor to go to court, but I will just have to sit and wait.

Could you answer me one final question? I have heard that in some circumstances the mobile camera does not always get an exact match on the registration number and they do a partial match and it is the wrong car. What happens if the photographic evidence does not automatically match your car and registration. Can you contest this, or would I be too late to do this if this happened in my case.

[JudgeJ]

Yes, as far as I am aware they do sometimes use partial index numbers. Quite how they determine which vehicle, from all the possibilities provided by the partial number, they choose to pursue, is anybody�s guess.

There are conflicting views concerning the right to see the photographs. Most camera partnerships allow you to view the photographic evidence they have by appointment before you decide whether to accept a FPO. You most certainly must have them provided to you if you plead not guilty in court.

The time to decide whether to adopt either of these courses, though, was at the early stages of this affair when you received the original NIP. If you believed then that there was a possibility that the vehicle was not yours, then that was the time to set about establishing the facts.

However, you have a problem now. As a result of taking the advice to ignore the request for the driver�s identity, the original speeding charge will now almost certainly have been dropped. You now face a Section 172 offence and the photographic evidence is no longer relevant. Only if you identify the driver as yourself and persuade the CPS to revert to the original speeding offence would it become relevant again. The CPS, for its part, however, will probably only revert to the speeding offence if you plead guilty. Otherwise they will simply continue with the S172 prosecution.

I think you must just sit tight and await further developments. Any prosecution will now almost certainly be under S172 (the time for beginning a speeding prosecution has elapsed anyway). I think your only possible escape route is to hope that it is either not pursued at all, or if it is, that you can persuade the court that it is �out of time�.

Hope this helps.