Points on license- bizarre situation.

TooManyPoints

Just to clarify, the offence was a year and 4 months ago. 29th nov 2020.

Thanks, I'd missed that. That makes it even more astonishing that nobody has knocked on your door for payment.

You do not have to make a Statutory Declaration (SD) at the convicting court. You can make it at any Magistrates' court, or before a solicitor or Commissioner for Oaths. It's free at the court though a solicitor may charge a small fee - perhaps £5-£10. But if you make it other than in the convicting court you will have the responsibility to get the SD there. You should do it within 21 days of learning of your conviction. A court must hear it if it is made within that time and may hear it beyond. You may have to wait longer for an appointment in the court and they will not refuse to hear your SD if you applied within 3 weeks but could not make it because of lack of court time. 

What happens after that is that your conviction (together with any fines, costs, points etc.) are set aside as if they never happened. The police have the opportunity to begin the prosecution again. Hopefully somebody will look at the papers and establish what has occurred. If you have not provided a s172 response naming yourself as the driver at the relevant time there is no way you can be convicted. As well as that, being a hire car you should have been insured anyway.

Whatever your enquiries reveal you must make the SD. You have been convicted by a court and only a court can set that conviction aside. Do let us know what happens because I (and I suspect others) are intrigued.

Just an afterthought - you have not changed address since Nov 2020 have you?

EDIT - and another afterthought. The fact that the court is 100 miles from home (and presumably nowhere you are likely to have driven) makes some sort of administrative error more likely. Motoring offences are usually heard locally to where the alleged offence is said to have occurred. 

Car_54

Grumpy_chap said:

Is it possible that this is nothing at all to do with the hire car?

Could it be that DVLA simply made an admin error somewhere and someone mis-keyed the driving licence details of whoever was done for driving without insurance and that just happens to be the OP's driving licence details that were entered?

I imagine any keying error would have been at the court, and sent electronically to the DVLA.

However, I guess they may still be using a quill pen and snailmail ...

DB1904

subbysmith said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Is it possible that this is nothing at all to do with the hire car?

Could it be that DVLA simply made an admin error somewhere and someone mis-keyed the driving licence details of whoever was done for driving without insurance and that just happens to be the OP's driving licence details that were entered?

Yeah, that's what we are thinking it might be. It's a waiting game now to hear back from the hire car and the magistrate court.

No, it's not a waiting game. You need to be proactive about this.

subbysmith

TooManyPoints said:

Just to clarify, the offence was a year and 4 months ago. 29th nov 2020.

Thanks, I'd missed that. That makes it even more astonishing that nobody has knocked on your door for payment.

You do not have to make a Statutory Declaration (SD) at the convicting court. You can make it at any Magistrates' court, or before a solicitor or Commissioner for Oaths. It's free at the court though a solicitor may charge a small fee - perhaps £5-£10. But if you make it other than in the convicting court you will have the responsibility to get the SD there. You should do it within 21 days of learning of your conviction. A court must hear it if it is made within that time and may hear it beyond. You may have to wait longer for an appointment in the court and they will not refuse to hear your SD if you applied within 3 weeks but could not make it because of lack of court time. 

What happens after that is that your conviction (together with any fines, costs, points etc.) are set aside as if they never happened. The police have the opportunity to begin the prosecution again. Hopefully somebody will look at the papers and establish what has occurred. If you have not provided a s172 response naming yourself as the driver at the relevant time there is no way you can be convicted. As well as that, being a hire car you should have been insured anyway.

Whatever your enquiries reveal you must make the SD. You have been convicted by a court and only a court can set that conviction aside. Do let us know what happens because I (and I suspect others) are intrigued.

Just an afterthought - you have not changed address since Nov 2020 have you?

EDIT - and another afterthought. The fact that the court is 100 miles from home (and presumably nowhere you are likely to have driven) makes some sort of administrative error more likely. Motoring offences are usually heard locally to where the alleged offence is said to have occurred. 

Thanks for the advice. I will apply for an SD asap. I haven't changed address since November 2020, we moved in July 2020 and our previous address of 6 years is owned by my in laws. The address before that is a house I still own. So any post for the last 16 years would have reached me. 

Manxman_in_exile

Purely hypothetical question, but if the OP is NOT the driver convicted of the no insurance offence and DVLA have simply recorded the points against the OP's licence in some sort of admin error, can the OP swear a statutory declaration?  He wouldn't have been convicted of anything in the first place.  

That just leaves the question of getting DVLA to correct their admin error - assuming that is what it was.

subbysmith

DB1904 said:

subbysmith said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Is it possible that this is nothing at all to do with the hire car?

Could it be that DVLA simply made an admin error somewhere and someone mis-keyed the driving licence details of whoever was done for driving without insurance and that just happens to be the OP's driving licence details that were entered?

Yeah, that's what we are thinking it might be. It's a waiting game now to hear back from the hire car and the magistrate court.

No, it's not a waiting game. You need to be proactive about this.

I meant it's a waiting game to hear back from the magistrate court and car hire place. I've looked at the statutory declaration form and I don't know half of the details on the form, such as the case number, account reference or the date of the hearing.

subbysmith

TooManyPoints said:

we moved in July 2020 

Did you change the address on the vehicle's V5C (Registration document)? Might help if you had a look at it and noted the "docref" date at the foot of page 2. This will show when the DVLA's records were updated. None of this should matter too much as you should not have been convicted without evidence that you were driving, though if you haven't updated the V5C it may explain why you've received no correspondence. As well as that when somebody goes "AWOL" they usually end up traced by MIB insurance records for the vehicle, especially in the time since this incident. I'm just trying to cover all the angles.

Yes, the car that was written off on the 25th Nov was registered to the new address as was my driving license. But that car was signed over to Tesco bank to dispose of. The car I had from the 25th Nov to 5th Dec was a hire car, not registered to me at all 

Aretnap

subbysmith said:

Update, I have finally got through to DVLA and found out which magistrates. Not sure how they choose the magistrate court, but this one is 100 miles from my home.

The magistrates court will generally be one that's local to where the (alleged) offence took place. 

Car_54

Manxman_in_exile said:

Purely hypothetical question, but if the OP is NOT the driver convicted of the no insurance offence and DVLA have simply recorded the points against the OP's licence in some sort of admin error, can the OP swear a statutory declaration?  He wouldn't have been convicted of anything in the first place.  

That just leaves the question of getting DVLA to correct their admin error - assuming that is what it was.

No, he can't. But in that event the court should be able to confirm that it's an admin error (probably theirs) and sort it out with DVLA.

Car_54

Aretnap said:

subbysmith said:

Update, I have finally got through to DVLA and found out which magistrates. Not sure how they choose the magistrate court, but this one is 100 miles from my home.

The magistrates court will generally be one that's local to where the (alleged) offence took place. 

Or local to the (alleged) offender!