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

A Bristol man who spent six months in hospital after being diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis has finally returned home to find he had 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 they would take stock of the circumstances and waive the fine, but in a controversial one-stop-shop system, the explanation was not 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 campaigned against the system.

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After an outcry over similar examples of the system failing to take individual personal circumstances into account, Tory MP and Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk announced in March that the system needed to be reformed after two metro mayors – Andy Burnham of Greater Manchester. and then West Midlands metro mayor Andy Street – wrote calling for a review of the system following high-profile cases in their areas.

The problem stems from the automatic system of issuing fines to people for infringements such as not having a TV licence, not having valid car insurance, tax or MoT. People are asked to fill in a form and add any explanation or mitigating circumstances, even if they admit to the crime, and prosecutors and magistrates must, in theory, take this into account and decide whether the prosecution and fine procedure is in the public interest .

Evening Standard court reporter Tristan Kirk highlighted cases where those who receive fines have valid and often tragic or traumatic reasons – including a woman who was fined for missing her car insurance renewal date just days after her toddler three months he died – but I am ignored by the judicial system.

He said the semi-automated system meant the letters and parts of the forms where explanations and mitigations are produced are not sent to prosecutors or read by magistrates. The man in the last case highlighted by Mr Kirk is from Bristol and was suddenly taken ill last September.

He told the judiciary which fined him for not having insurance on his car: “I admit that I am the keeper of the vehicle and that I failed to arrange the SORN earlier and it appeared as uninsured on 9 May 2024.

“I felt extremely unwell, being admitted to the Royal United Hospital, Bath, on 9 September 2023 as an emergency, and after a series of hospital ward moves, then intermediate care and step-down transfers, m “I just 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 enforced. I had been diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis on September 8 and was told at that appointment that I shouldn’t drive and I haven’t 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, meaning: “The first day I had assistance to complete the online procedure and this paperwork. The lack of insurance was an innocent mistake, due to my illness and being away from home for six months. I hope this can be considered,” he added.

“As everyone knows by now, letters like this don’t – in the speedy justice system – automatically go to prosecutors,” Mr Kirk explained. “So there was probably 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 totaling £156 for not having car insurance despite that her daughter wrote to the court to explain that her mother has schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s, broke her ankle, had been in hospital and is now in care.

“The question is, could that magistrate have really considered the guilty plea before sentencing and issuing a fine?” asked Mr. Kirk. “That was in the Single Justice Procedure, so it was behind closed doors, the cases were dealt with quickly and only a magistrate makes decisions.

“In DVLA prosecutions you find a lot of elderly people being prosecuted. Pensioners can’t break the rules just because they’re old. But there is a risk that they have health problems or have died and cannot keep up with the rules of the road.

“How are the authorities mitigating this?” he asked. Mr Kirk said the case of the Bristol man, who was hospitalized for six months but was still fined, showed the problem still existed.

“It was as obvious then (in August) as it is now that something wasn’t working right. Hundreds of thousands of criminal cases have passed through the Single Justice Procedure in the past months.

“The magistrates themselves have made it clear that the system is broken and needs reform. And yet, nothing much seems to have happened,” he added.