Should I pay or should I go(to court)?

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

Car_54 wrote: »

If they didn't convict, the question of points didn't arise.

Quite. My point remains, people are caught without insurance and yet the courts do have leeway to deal with the situation without a compulsory 6 points and fine. The costs involved in a conviction are very high, and contrary to some suggestions it is not entirely hopeless.

Get expert advice.

TooManyPoints

...the courts do have leeway to deal with the situation without a compulsory 6 points and fine

.
Le s see whether they would be likely to exercise some leeway here.

Because according to the original post the OP took reasonable steps to ensure they were insured.

Really? What steps were they then? All have seen is this:

I explained that I was convinced the van was insured as I'd checked with my father a few weeks previously before another trip

.
Then this:

As far as my dad was concerned, he'd had no notifications from his insurance company to inform him that his insurance had expired but after speaking to them, they informed him that he'd by notified via email.
My dad checked through his emails and found that a renewal notification had indeed been sent but as it had gone straight to Junk, he'd missed it.

We have also heard that the OP recoiled at the idea of asking his father to prove that the vehicle was covered (which is actually his obligation under the law). All this makes for a scarcely compelling case to accept a Special Reasons argument.

The situation for the OP is quite simple. He can accept the fixed penalty or take the matter to court. If he does so he must plead guilty because No Insurance is a strict liability offence. He was driving without insurance and the only statutory exception concerns driving an employers vehicle. He must then argue Special Reasons; which, in my view, would be bound to fail. All he can tell the court is that he asked his father previously (possibly before the policy expired) whether he was covered. Since then the policy lapsed because his father changed his bank account and did not check his e-mails properly to see that all was in order with his regular payments. The simplest thing he could have done was to check AskMID (or at least ask his father to make the check if he was concerned about falling foul of Data Protection laws). Both of them would have seen immediately that the vehicle was not insured. Simply saying that he asked if the vehicle was insured some time earlier and was told it was simply will not cut the mustard for a Special Reasons argument.

The cost of failure with his argument will be a fine two-thirds of a weeks net income, a surcharge of 10% of the fine (minimum £30), £85 costs and six points. So unless his income is lower than £280 per week he will be worse off. It is very unfortunate when these things happen and of course few people in the OP's circumstances check they are covered every time they take to the road. But the law is quite clear. If you are driving as a named driver on somebody elses policy you have just the same responsibility to ensure cover is in place before driving. When things go wrong in the way they have here you must be prepared for the consequences. Saying "it wasn't my fault" won't work.

[Sorry, no apostrophes. The site returns an error when I insert them]