Statement of Means for magistrate's court

[sydb]

Hi,

I got a fixed penalty notice for speeding back in October. As my current contract is some distance from home and I don't get back regularly, I didn't find out about this till January. Various circumstances led to me failing to dealing with the FPN in time to prevent it going to court, so I now have a magistrate's court date set for S172(3) (failure to give information of driver's identity).

The court date is a week on Monday. My intention is to plead guilty by letter, state my plea of mitigation and probably get a £1000 fine and six points. Bit much for 83 on the motorway but it's a fair cop guv.

Together with my plea in writing I have to provide a statement of means. Given I haven't yet decided how to treat my receipts from my limited company, I'm not sure what I should do. The form has:

Employer's name and address
Occupation (state if self-employed)
Net take home pay
Any other income (please give details)

Anyone had to fill in one of these before?

Thanks in advance for any advice....

sydb

[BrollyBonce]

My intention is to plead guilty by letter

A colleague did so a couple of years ago against solicitor's advice and found out afterwards that it is unwise to not attend. He lectured us all long and hard not to make his mistake. Feel free to have his advice. Apparently, the court jumps to assumptions about your guilt & attitude. Be meek, turn up and grovel.

, state my plea of mitigation and probably get a £1000 fine

If a day off work could bring this down to £500, would it be worth it?

Employer's name and address

Your LtdCo's name & address.

Occupation (state if self-employed)

Director of a Ltd Co and IT Contractor (or whatever). You are NOT self-employed.

Net take home pay

Since you haven't decided, just make something up. Or say £18,000 (so they don't think you're a tax dodger).

Any other income (please give details)

"Dividends of" and then someone will give you a good formula, but a projected income based on your rate x 80% (deductions for time lost due to sick, holiday and bank holidays) and feed that onto a rate calculator (there are links on the right hand side of this page) should give you some numbers. But don't forget to lay it on thick with the travel & accommodation expenses.

[sydb]

A colleague did so a couple of years ago against solicitor's advice and found out afterwards that it is unwise to not attend. He lectured us all long and hard not to make his mistake. Feel free to have his advice. Apparently, the court jumps to assumptions about your guilt & attitude. Be meek, turn up and grovel.

If a day off work could bring this down to £500, would it be worth it?

Thanks for that.

Everything I've read points towards the court being happier if you plead by post as it saves them time.

Saving £500 on the fine would not be worth a day off work. In addition to losing a day's pay, I'd have to do a 200 mile round trip to the court.

It sounds like I should try and get some legal advice to clarify this.

As for the figures, I've managed to get my accountant to give me some figures

[NotAllThere]

My wife got summonsed once for a driving offence.

She had had a head on collision at 50mph, which, according to police reports, was due to driving on two underinflated tyres.

She sought legal advice and was told she could either:

a) Fight it in court, with about a 50/50 chance of success - there were irregularities in the police case.
b) Plead guilty, by letter, with mitigation.

This is a level 4 offence. That means up to £2500 per defect ( so up to £5000 ), and 3 points minimum to 3 points per defect.

She chose to plead guilty by letter, which is what the solicitor advised. We carefully chose the wording of the mitigation to fit the legislation. She got 3 points plus a £50 fine. We then left the country and she got a nice new clean license.

If you turn up and plead guilty, you are wasting court time, and so are likely to receive a harsher fine.

A colleague did so a couple of years ago against solicitor's advice and found out afterwards that it is unwise to not attend...

hmm. The opposite to our solicitor. Take legal advice. It probably depends considerably on the facts of the case.

Also see here. and here where it says:

"The chances are if you can identify the driver and accept the speeding ticket, they will agree to drop the S172".

[BrilloPad]

I seem to remember that if you are means tested then everything over £5k is the same fine?

I got done in 1996 and received the max fine : I just did not fill the form in. I think it was £120. Though they gave me 4 points instead of 3 for being lippy on the section for mitigating circumstances.

[Moscow Mule]

I got done in 1996 and received the max fine : I just did not fill the form in.

It's now an offence to not fill the form in.

[sydb]

For the record

I pleaded guilty by post. I gave detailed mitigating circumstances including the (true) explanation that I had been delayed in responding to the request for driver's details by working away from home and a death in the family.

Result: £725 fine and six points. The fine is bearable. The six points is not, on top of the three I already have...

Tulips.

[NotAllThere]

Have you considered leaving the country?

[sydb]

Have you considered leaving the country?

Does checking immigration rules and house prices for half the world's nations count?

[fadanoid]

Bummer. They gave me one of those 'Statement of Means' forms a few years back and I just said I was on the bones of me arse and couldn't even afford to pay me credit card bills. To help them, I sent copies of my latest credit card statements to them. Result? The fkucers fined me 45 nicker!