Could saving paper save your driving licence?

May 15, 2025 | By: Peter Stringfellow

When a “dreaded “notice of intended prosecution arrives in the post, alleging that a driver is guilty of an offence, it is important to save the envelope that it arrived in.

One might think that the (normally brown) cheaply produced paper envelope that contains a notice under Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requiring the identification of the driver, is superfluous, and in doing so throw it into the recycling.

Please don’t. It could contain valuable information that could save your driving licence.

In accordance with Section 1 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, there are strict time limits within which the registered keeper of a vehicle must be served with a notice, as regards most motoring offences.

If the registered keeper can evidence that the notice was received outside of the time limit, then a driver is entitled to invite the Magistrates to acquit of the offence(s) alleged even if there is strong evidence that supports a conviction.

Whilst the time limit applies solely to the receipt of a notice by the registered keeper, under Section 172, the requirement to give such information as to the identity of the driver applies to the person keeping the vehicle.

As vehicle ownership has changed in the UK and more cars on the road are leased, the registered keeper can often be a car leasing company. This can result in a notice of intended prosecution being served within the time limit on the registered keeper, with the lessee as the keeper being notified some time later.

A keeper of a vehicle could legitimately receive a notice more than four weeks after an alleged offence and thus may find it difficult to identify the driver, due to the lapse of time since the alleged commission of the offence. The law requires a keeper of a vehicle to give such information leading to the identity of the driver, and failure to do this can constitute an offence under Section 172.

In such a situation what is a keeper to do? It may be helpful to show when the keeper first received notification of the allegation, and to note what efforts have been made to identify the driver, since Section 172(4) states, “a person shall not be guilty of an offence if he shows that he did not know and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained who the driver was”.

It may be necessary to present a package of evidence as to when a keeper was notified as to the alleged commission of an offence, and what steps were undertaken to identify the driver.

If this happens to you, you should seek assistance from our helpful team who can provide you with pragmatic advice as to what may be deemed to be “reasonable diligence”.