What is a Notice of Intended Prosecution? Dos and Don’ts

So, a letter from the police drops through your letterbox: a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP).

This is a formal notice informing you that the police are investigating a road traffic offence. The NIP is the start of a legal process, not a charge or a conviction.

A NIP is required for a number of common motoring offences, including speeding, dangerous or careless driving, failing to comply with traffic lights or traffic signs, failing to stop after an accident or report it, using a mobile phone while driving or leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position.

Acting promptly and understanding your obligations is crucial.

Under section 1 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, a person shall not be convicted of certain road traffic offences unless they were warned at the time of the offence that they may be prosecuted. A written NIP is one way to issue such a warning.

The NIP must be served to arrive with the registered keeper of the vehicle within 14 days of the alleged offence and must specify the nature of the alleged offence and the time and place where it is alleged to have been committed.

A NIP can be served verbally so long as this is within 14 days – so a police officer on a roadside stop may tell a driver they are being ‘reported’ for consideration of a prosecution, and the driver will have given their details to the police.

There are exceptions. For example, if the police could not, with reasonable diligence, identify the registered keeper in time, or if the vehicle’s details are not up to date with the DVLA, the 14-day rule may not invalidate proceedings. It is always essential to ensure your registered address and vehicle details are correct. In any event, you should always ensure they are updated – it is commonplace for drivers to be convicted of offences of which they are unaware, where police and court letters have been sent to their former address, and the court accepts them as having been properly served. This can lead to a messy process of reopening the case, and includes cases where drivers might have been disqualified by a court, unbeknownst to them.

NIPs are accompanied by a requirement under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to identify the driver of the vehicle at the time of the alleged offence. Therefore, you are legally required to respond to this request within 28 days of receiving it. You must, by law, provide the information requested, even if you were not the driver.

Failing to respond is a separate criminal offence in its own right that carries 6 penalty points and a fine of up to £1,000 on conviction. Some years ago, the offence attracted 3 penalty points, but was amended to remove an incentive to fail to respond to offences that would attract more points, e.g., a serious speeding offence. This now means that you should be wary of failing to respond – after all, why get 6 penalty points for a 3 penalty point offence!

Often, a person may receive a NIP after the 14-day time limit and believe it is therefore invalid – however, this might be where they are not the registered keeper of the vehicle and the registered keeper has informed the police of who the driver may be, e.g. where a car is leased or hired. The fact that the NIP arrived after the 14-day limit does not matter in such cases.

Often, the NIP is sent to an employer where the driver is an employee. In such cases, the employer will report the driver’s identity to the police, which will trigger a further police letter requiring the driver to provide driver information; failing which, an offence would also be committed.

There is actually a defence to a failure to provide driver information: this is where a person ‘shows that he did not know and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained who the driver of the vehicle was’. However, this does not apply to a limited company or body corporate unless ‘the alleged offender shows that no record was kept of the persons who drove the vehicle and that the failure to keep a record was reasonable’ – in short, this means that such business must keep a record of drivers of vehicles, failing of which they may have to justify why this would not be reasonable.

There is a further situation where the ‘14-day rule’ does not apply – this is where an accident occurs ‘owing to the presence of the vehicle’. The point here is that the driver will already be aware that an event has occurred; hence, it is not necessary to send a NIP to them. However, the driver does have to know that the accident took place – there will be occasions when one occurs but is not known about, e.g. minimal contact with another vehicle.

If you receive a Notice of Intended Prosecution, it is important to check the date of the alleged offence and when the notice was issued. You must respond within 28 days and ensure the information you provide is accurate. You must not ignore the notice. You should not guess who was driving – if you are unsure, you must make proper enquiries and not provide false or inaccurate information. It is relatively rare for it genuinely not to be possible to establish a driver’s identity.

Contact our road transport solicitors today

If you have received a Notice of Intended Prosecution, our regulatory and transport law solicitors are here to help you with the investigation. Please contact us using our online enquiry form or by calling 0330 404 7949.