UKC

Had an unexpected and unpleasant surprise today.

We moved house late last year, and it seems I forgot to update my V5/logbook with the new address. I updated everything else to do with car - insurance, license etc, just not registered keepers address.

I only realised my mistake a few weeks ago, when my wife mentioned she thinks see may have got a speeding fine recently. 

So I updated the V5 address, and emailed local police SCP to see if we had an outstanding speeding fine against our number plate that might have gone to old address. Annoyingly we had a mail redirect set up, but must have elapsed shortly before.

Anyway, turns out we do have a speeding fine, and SCP emailed me to say "Due to no response the matter has already been referred for court proceedings. I will update your address on our system so that your court paperwork will be sent to the correct address"

So, due to my own incompetence and other half's driving lapse (she's never had a speeding ticket before) now seems I'm in a bit of a situation.

I think I'm probably now facing a 'failure to provide information' offense under section 172 of Road Traffic Act, rather than a speeding fine, for which 6 points and hefty fine could be the consequence, but don't actually know yet, as not seen any paperwork.

Anyone else been in a similar situation before? Am I likely to get the book thrown at me, or will they be lenient if they realise failure to respond wasn't deliberate?

I'm intending to ring the SCP/Road Safety Team tomorrow and see if I can get any further information and clarity, but somewhat worried proceedings now too far advanced to prevent me ending up in court!

Happy Wednesday!

Have a look on PePiPoo, they're normally the authority on speeding/parking matters. Here's a quick example that seems relevant:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/lofiversion/index.php/t139731.html

Not a big issue normally. Instead of being offered points and fine by the police the matter will be dealt with by the court, who will likely give you the points and fine plus court costs (used to be £60 or thereabouts).

No need to go to court, you can file your response by post once you are served. Explain you never received the nip and are sorry for wasting the courts time, but maybe skip telling them you didn't change your details with the dvla with regards the v5

I ended up going this way once when I could not provide my drivers license to the police within 7 days of being stopped because I had sent it off to the dvla. Still got smacked with paying court costs...

I had exactly the same experience a few years ago. I thought that when I had informed the driving license authority in Swansea of my change of address that their car registration department would also be informed. Not the case: you have to inform the two departments independently. Absurdly British!

Why is it absurd that the registration of a large mobile piece of machinery is dealt with separately to an award given to a person after passing an examination?

Especially as the registered keeper of a vehicle isn't necessarily the owner or the driver, and there's no link between having a driving licence and being the registered keeper.

Exactly this, went to court, was very polite, explained moved house etc, honest mistake, pleaded guilty to speeding. Points, fine, court costs.

Don’t be afraid to ask to speak. The court solicitor and clerk will be rather overbearing, but you do have the right to put your side of things.

Except that I passed the test 50 years earlier, and this was simply a change of address for both license and registration. I've had to do these changes of address about twenty times in different parts of the world, and in some places one only has to change the address with the vehicle authorities once for both the car registration and driving license to be updated at the same time. Mind you, in some parts of the world one actually has to take a complete driving test again (the only merit of that being one ends up with numerous, valid driving licenses).

Maybe not absurd, and I'm sure there must be historical reasons from when databases were less joined-up, but on the face of it, given that they're the two main roles of the SAME government department (DRIVER & VEHICLE Licensing Agency), it's pretty odd that such a government department would keep two completely separate records for the same person.

This happened to one of my employees, he was facing 6 points for speeding, 3 for going through a red light (moved through to let an ambulance pass) plus whatever for not updating his details.

Due to an existing 3 points he was facing a ban. 

He went to court and our sales director went with him to back up the plee that without his licence he couldn't do his job as a mobile service engineer. 

Whilst waiting a solicitor was prowling the waiting room. He took all the details, went to speak to the judge or magistrate or whoever. Came back and said £500 cash, 3 points and your away home. The sales director went to the bank and lent him £500, it was handed over. License was endorsed and job was done.

How much of the cash fine stuck in the solicitors or magistrates pocket we never knew. 

I think of myself as really quite conscientious and careful.  But I made this mistake when I moved house for the first time as an adult.  I think I just assumed that telling DVLA I was moving would propagate that change down to all the DVLA's departments.

Thankfully I had diarised my car tax renewal, so a few days before it expired I spotted that, oddly, DVLA hadn't contacted me as usual.  That was when I discovered that my old house's new owner was binning everything, including the redirect labels I'd given him...

edit: if you have to tell the DVLA about your licence and your vehicle registration(s) separately, that's fine.  Given just how many people manage to screw this up, though, why can't they just put a line in bold text in the letter that comes with your new licence saying 'You seem to have changed your address - have you remembered to do it for your V5C as well?'  

The Government Gateway has improved things immensely, but it's a very recent system.

Again, there is no requirement to insert licence details on the V5, in fact you don't need a driving licence to be the registered keeper of a vehicle. Likewise you can hold a driving licence but never be the registered keeper of a vehicle. They're two completely separate systems.

Yes, in an ideal world everything would be linked, but it's a big assumption that government IT systems all talk to each other (and will check that John Smith changing the keepers address of a vehicle is the same John Smith that used to live at the previous address, holds a driving licence and needs the license details automatically changing too).

I'm not sure what proportion of licence holders actually own a vehicle. If you allow for partners that share a single car, company cars and people with licences that just don't have a vehicle then guessing at 50% might not be far off.

There just isn't much correlation between the databases.

Was  the Solicitor Saul Goodman?

Oh, I get why there are two separate databases and why you need to notify each.  But given how many people get this wrong it seems daft to me that they don't mention, when you write to change one of them, that you should check if you need to change the other too.  

But it is linked. If you go to www.gov.uk/tell-dvla-changed-address it walks you through all the necessary steps.

That's a series of links to change separate documents. However, anyone who uses that page gets all the prompts and information they need to change the details on their driving licence, V5 etc.

It's a really good resource, and anyone using it will be absolutely fine. However some people are expecting to be able to notify a change just one document (e.g just the driving licence but not the V5) and assuming the DVLA will change everything else without further notification. That's something else entirely.

Just had to renew the picture on my driving license. It came back today. 

The FIRST thing on the letter that came with it was......

"If you are the registered keeper of a vehicle...."

Ah, good - they've seen sense then. This happened to me 20 odd years ago!

Just to ruin your day further, I think it's a fine of up to £1000 for failure to notify the DVLA of changes of address - your error is not a defence.

Depends how lenient the judge is on the day.

D = driver [and] V = vehicle L = licensing A = authority. Seems like a reasonable assumption that they would do both

Yes, had already worked that one out. 

Hopefully very!

Thanks for various response, very useful and feel a bit more clued up as to what process is now.

They do do both. People are assuming they'll do both if you only notify them that one needs changing.

I'm trying to think if automatically updating everything, even if you've not asked them to, could have unintended consequences.

It could easily have unintended consequences:

John Smith has a car and a son, also named John. John junior passes his driving test, but doesn't buy a car. He moves out and changes his address with DVLA. If DVLA then automatically changed the address that John Smith's car was registered to, it would be a problem. But if it just says John Smith on the V5, how would they know any better?

... all of which type of problem is fundamentally down to the UK's lack of effective personal identification programme. For mainly historical reasons, latterly mainly political at the expense of practical benefit, we have always strenuously resisted the widespread use of personal identifiers, whether that be ID cards or even the equivalent of NI numbers for all citizens. One consequence of this is that it's effectively impossible to reliably join two databases of Person records. Another consequence is that it's much easier for people to go off-grid to avoid legal consequences of a variety of actions.

Any cut down on the number of civil servant's needed to individually amend different records, wash your mouth out with soap.