KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
there’s nether, it’s low level (6 points or up to a 6-month ban, and either a fine or community order).
So we need to prepare mitigation. The first and most important point is to attend court on the date you have been given and enter a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity. This means that we maintain maximum credit in sentence, as well as indicating to the court about your lack of previous convictions and previous good character. Secondly we will prepare to present mitigation based on the above guidelines to persuade the courts that you should be in the lowest bracket.
We will need to examine the prosecution evidence and exactly what they are accusing you of, the facts of the case and your account, and we will determine what bracket you should be in. And finally we shall present mitigation about your personal life, so how dependent you are on your licence for your work and your family, and they will also take that into account when deciding whether to disqualify. And then using all of these factors together we shall persuade the court to try to give you the minimum, which will hopefully be 6 points or if not, a short disqualification, and hopefully avoid community service and prison altogether.
OUTCOME:
We attended court with this gentleman and we successfully mitigated to avoid a ban and community orders. We persuaded the court that there was no harm or culpability, it was a genuine accident, he wasn’t working and there was no bad driving. That, together with the fact he’d not done it before and he pleaded guilty early, was enough persuasion for the court to give him just 6 points and fines/costs in the region of £1,000.
But, when sentencing, the court explained to him how lucky he was and warned him strongly not to do it again, otherwise he would end up with a lengthy ban and possibly prison.
CASE 3 Q
I was stopped for drink driving on Christmas Day would you believe! I had a few glasses of wine at my sister’s with lunch and was stopped on the way home. I have been
charged with a reading of 45 in breath and have a court hearing on the 6th January at XXX Magistrates’
PHTM DECEMBER 2023
Court. I fully accept the offence, I just want to know if there’s a way to avoid a ban.
A
You must attend on that date - if you fail to attend a warrant may be issued for your arrest and you may be held in custody until the next available court session. At court you will be
required to enter a plea. Generally you will have one of two options; guilty or not guilty.
If you plead guilty, you will be disqualified on that day. You will be given a 12-16 month ban together with a course to reduce the ban by a quarter. By pleading guilty you would maintain maximum credit in sentence, keeping the fines and costs to a minimum (the fine is 150% of your weekly income minus a third for pleading guilty, a victim surcharge of 40% of the fine and costs of £90). However, you will certainly be disqualified.
The second option is to plead not guilty. If you plead not guilty the matter will be adjourned to a later date for trial giving us time to examine your defence – on the face of it there’s no obvious way of defending you but we will need to speak about that in more detail. If you were found not guilty then you get no ban or fines – but the risk is that if you’re found guilty after trial, you lose credit. This means the fine remains at 150% of your weekly income, the victim surcharge will be higher (40% of the fine) and costs would increase to in the region £700. You may also receive a longer disqualification.
OUTCOME:
This gentleman attended court in January and pleaded guilty. He received credit in sentence but was still banned for 12 months and received fines/costs of about £1,100. He did the course to reduce the ban to 9 months so he was back driving again in October. Sadly he lost his job.
For advice on motoring matters, email
advice@pattersonlaw.co.uk For updates on road traffic law follow us on
facebook.com/PattersonLawMotoringSolicitors or
twitter.com/Patterson_law_ We regularly share advice and tips to stay safe and to keep your licence clean of penalty points.
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