Speeding Fine Escalation Options

[Touchdown469]

Hi


I hope I'm on the correct forum.


I received a speeding ticket in April (43 in a 30) which I quickly admitted to and paid the £100 fine. Unfortunately, I forgot to send off my driving license. In June I then received a refund for the £100 which I found unusual, but it was followed by a detailed letter asking me to admit the speeding offence again, asking for all my financial details and to reply within 21 days which I did. I then receive a bill from the court for £671 for the same speeding offence which I admitted to in April ! Has anybody else experienced this ? To me, yes I forgot to post my license, but an additional £571 seems way over the top. I have 14 days to pay or appeal. Any advice ?

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[peterguk]

Phone the court and confirm a) what you have been convicted of and b) a breakdown of the total figure.

[Touchdown469]

The letter says :

Fine £533
Victim Sur £53
Costs £85

Total £671

[The Rookie]

Pretty much normal apart from the level of fine, you made two mistakes
1/ Not accepting the fixed penalty as per the instructions
2/ Not asking the court to take into account that you tried and failed to accept the fixed penalty and to impose the same penalty.

Failing to accept the fixed penalty (even if you had that's not strictly admitting anything) was always going to cost you more, a lot more if you don't do 2 above.

The level of fine is outside normal unless pretty well paid? The fine should be circa 100% of your WEEKLY take home (some people don't read the instructions and use monthly or even annually) pay (capped at £750) less 1/3 for the guilty plea, plus £85 costs and a surcharge of 10% (£30 min) of the fine.

Its presumably also hit you with 4-6 points and not 3?

This post has been edited by The Rookie: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 - 11:27

[Jlc]

Has anybody else experienced this ?

Yes - it's a fairly regular forum topic. You can either appeal or ask them to reopen the case - there's a template letter that I've posted to another recent thread, I'll dig it out.

Whilst the reasons behind your non-compliance are unconnected with the offence itself the court may not be minded to accept a fixed penalty, or close, equivalent.

[Touchdown469]

Thanks for all replies. Yes, also got hit with 4 pts as it was highetr than 41 in a 30. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I accepted the fixed penalty.

[The Rookie]

You state you didn't send off your licence, that is a condition of accepting it, which means you didn't.

You can phone the court and explain, explain that you believe you should have received the same tariff as a fixed penalty in line with the sentencing guidelines

where a penalty notice was not offered or taken up for reasons unconnected with the offence itself, such as administrative difficulties, 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.

Situated on page 189 of the court's sentencing guidelines.

[Jlc]

Situated on page 189 of the court's sentencing guidelines.

That's the old guidelines... It's now 453.

Template is here.

[nigelbb]

As an aside what is the reason for physically sending off the driving licence? In the days of the paper licence & paper counterpart then convictions needed to be updated on that but nowadays with the photo licence this is all done online. Is it merely to confirm that the person is who they claim to be? or at least has possession of the driving licence of the person they claim to be>

[The Rookie]

There has not been an official position on why it still needs to be sent off, but the usual supposition is to make sure the person claiming to be driving at l;east has access to the right driving licence (may not prove 100% its the right person, but a lot better than nothing).

Of course some people are still on a paper licence anyway, so it would be reasonable to keep 'one law for all' unless or until those are fully phased out.