Client Risked Losing Driving Licence - Outcome Avoided

Case study summary

Our client's driving licence details had been used fraudulently. Without his knowledge, over 12 penalty points had accumulated on his licence and he was disqualified from driving. We assisted our client with obtaining the evidence to prove that he had not committed the offences.

Case study

Our client was 27 years old. He had held a full UK driving licence since 2017. In July 2023, he received a letter from the DVLA to inform him that he was disqualified from driving because he had accumulated over 12 penalty points. This came as a huge shock to our client who had no knowledge of the penalty points and had recently treated himself to a brand new car. He felt as though he had lost his independence and the disqualification immediately began to have a detrimental impact on his mental health.

He visited us at our headquarters in Salford and brought all of the relevant paperwork for us to review as he had struggled to make sense of it himself. One of our expert defence lawyers sat down with him and identified the issues. It appeared that our client had been accused of speeding on four separate occasions across the country and in different vehicles. There was a fifth charge of failing to identify the driver of a vehicle. Each time our client had been accused of speeding, the Single Justice Procedure Notices had been posted to an address which he had no knowledge of. The matters were then decided in his absence and penalty points were imposed onto his licence.

Our client wholly denied the allegations. He explained that he had a problem with his engine in 2020 and he had used a hire car whilst it was being repaired. In order to hire the car, he was required to provide a copy of his driving licence and he suspected that, since then, someone must have been fraudulently using his identity. This was supported by the fact that one of the vehicle registration plates which had been caught speeding was a personalised registration plate with the car hire company's initials.

We instructed an experienced motoring barrister to attend court with our client and persuade the court that each case should be reopened. The court agreed and a trial date was set. We then obtained as much evidence as we could to prove that our client was not the individual who was driving the vehicles which had been caught speeding. This included obtaining bank statements, his work rota, photographic evidence of his location at the time of the offending and witness statements from his colleagues and friends.

We presented the evidence to the prosecution and, following a review of our carefully presented submissions, they immediately confirmed that all charges would be dropped and our client's driving licence would be re-instated. Our client was extremely relieved with this outcome and grateful for our help.