Company Not Guilty of Failing to Give Driver Details

Our company client was acquitted of failing to give driver details after a trial in the Magistrates’ Court this week. One of its vehicles had allegedly been caught speeding, and the police sent a request for driver details and a notice of intended prosecution.

Court in No Doubt The Company Would Have Responded

The company did not receive either the notice or the reminder and was unable to respond to them. The prosecution insisted on proceeding to a trial despite the company giving other examples of mail having gone astray.

Lawyer Lucy Whitaker represented the company at the trial, where a company employee provided testimony about the systems in place for handling mail. He told the court about the severe disruption to their mail resulting from the pandemic. Mail had had to be collected from the sorting office on numerous occasions, and letters from banks and other organisations had never reached them.

The prosecution urged the court to convict on the basis that there was no written evidence of a complaint to Royal Mail or of any other mail going missing. Despite this, the magistrates confirmed that they were in no doubt that the requests for driver details had not been received and that if they had been, the company would have responded.

The company was found not guilty, and accordingly, no penalty was imposed.

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