Outrage as Bristol man seriously ill in hospital for six months fined for not insuring his car

A man from Bristol who spent six months in hospital after being diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis finally returned home to find he’d been fined for letting his car insurance run out while he was being treated.

The 65-year-old, who has not been named, explained the circumstances to magistrates in the hope that they would realise the circumstances and drop the fine, but under a controversial Single Justice Procedure system, the explanation wasn’t read by anyone at Bristol Magistrates' Court and the man was fined.

He was ordered to pay a £40 fine along with a £16 victim surcharge, in the latest example highlighted by a court reporter who has been campaigning against the system.

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After an outcry over similar examples of the system failing to take into account the individual personal circumstances, Conservative MP and Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk announced in March that reform of the system was needed, after two Metro Mayors - Labour ’s Andy Burnham from Greater Manchester and the then West Midlands metro mayor Andy Street - wrote demanding a review of the system following high profile cases in their areas.

The issue comes from the automated system of sending fines to people for transgressions like failing to have a TV licence, no valid car insurance, tax or MoT. People are asked to fill in a form and add any explanation or mitigating circumstance even if they admit the offence, and the prosecutors and magistrates are, in theory, supposed to take that into account and decide whether proceeding with the prosecution and fine is in the public interest.

Evening Standard court reporter Tristan Kirk has been highlighting cases where those receiving fines have valid and often tragic or traumatic reasons - including one woman who was fined for missing her car insurance renewal date just days after her three-month old baby had died - but are ignored by the court system.

He said the semi-automated system meant letters and the parts of forms where explanations and mitigation is produced aren’t sent to prosecutors and aren’t read by magistrates either. The man in the latest case, highlighted by Mr Kirk, is from Bristol and was suddenly taken ill in September last year.

He told the court system fining him for not having insurance for his car: “I acknowledge that I am the keeper of the vehicle and that I failed to arrange SORN earlier and that it appeared as uninsured on May 9, 2024.

“I have been extremely unwell, having been admitted to the Royal United Hospital, Bath, on September 9, 2023 as an emergency, and after a series of hospital ward moves, then transfers to intermediate and step-down care, I have only returned home, with supportive care, on May 3, 2024,” he wrote.

“I did not see the Fixed Penalty Notice sent to my home address on February 13 and, as I live alone, it was not seen or acted on. I had been diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis on September 8 and was told at that appointment that I must not drive, and I have not driven since,” he added.

The man said he arranged to SORN his car, meaning it was off the road and no longer needed to be insured, on May 15, which was: “The first day that I have had assistance to complete the procedure online and this paperwork. The lack of insurance was an innocent mistake, due to my illness and absence from home for six months. I hope this can be taken into consideration,” he added.

“As everyone knows by now, letters like that don’t - in the fast-track justice system - go automatically to prosecutors,” explained Mr Kirk. “So there was likely no check to see if it was in the public interest to proceed.”

In August last year, Mr Kirk uncovered a case where a 78-year-old woman was fined and ordered to pay costs and a victim surcharge totalling £156 for not having car insurance despite her daughter writing to the court to explain that her mother has schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s, had broken her ankle, had been in hospital and is now in care.

“The question is, can that magistrate genuinely have looked at the guilty plea before convicting and issuing a fine?” Mr Kirk asked. “This was in the Single Justice Procedure, so it was behind-closed-doors, cases dealt with at speed, and only one magistrate making the decisions.

“In DVLA prosecutions, you find lots of older people being prosecuted. Pensioners can't break the rules just because they're old. But there's a risk they are having health difficulties, or have died, and they can’t keep up with road rules.

“How do the authorities mitigate for this?” he asked. Mr Kirk said the case of the man in Bristol who had been in hospital for six months but was still fined showed the problem still exists.

“It was as obvious then (in August) as it is now that something isn’t working correctly. Hundreds of thousands of criminal cases have gone through the Single Justice Procedure in the intervening months.

"Magistrates themselves have said clearly that the system is broken and needs reform. And yet, nothing much seems to have happened,” he added.