AC-2025-LON-000004 - [2025] EWHC 2798 (Admin)

Mr Jarvis submits that as at the date of the alleged offence, 17 January 2024, the registered keeper of the vehicle was the company Million Miles. The Justices found as a fact that the actual keeper was the Respondent’s mother in law. It follows that the Respondent was not the keeper at the relevant date.

The Respondent denied being the driver of the vehicle and denied being able to identify the driver. The Justices accepted this as a fact.

Therefore the obligation upon the Respondent arose under s.172(2)(b) RTA 1988, “Where the driver of a vehicle is alleged to be guilty of an offence to which this section applies….(b) any other person shall if required as stated above give any information which it is in his power to give and may lead to identification of the driver”.

On the Notice of Intended Prosecution, it was made completely clear that if the recipient of the Notice, here the Notice of 8 March 2024, denied being the driver then they had to complete Sections B and C of the Notice. The box that the Respondent ticked in Section B expressly states, “Now complete Section C with details of the new keeper/previous keeper”(the bold type is in the Notice itself). Therefore, the form is clear that if, as was the case here, the recipient of the Notice purchased the vehicle after the alleged offence, they must provide the details of the previous keeper – here the mother in law. The Respondent failed to do that.

Even assuming the Respondent believed that his mother in law was not the driver and did not know who the driver was, that is irrelevant. The legal obligation was to name the previous keeper. If that had been done the police would then have been able to serve a fresh Notice on that person.

The Respondent failed to comply with the requirements of s.172(2)(b) and was thus guilty of an offence under s.172(3). The defence in s.172(4) is not available to him because that only applies to an offence by virtue of s.172(2)(a), i.e. where the person “keeping the vehicle” fails to give information as to the identity of the driver. In this case the Respondent was not the person keeping the vehicle at the time of the offence, and therefore this falls within subsection (b), not (a), of s.172(2) and the s.172(4) defence does not arise.

Mr Jarvis submits that the reference in s.172(2)(a) to the “person keeping the vehicle” must be to the time of the alleged offence, rather than a subsequent keeper who received the Notice. It would make no sense for a subsequent keeper, who might well have no knowledge of the driver but would necessarily know the identity of the previous keeper, to be able to avail themselves of the s.172(4) defence if they failed to identify the previous keeper.

This analysis is supported by DPP v Grant [2001] EWHC Admin 1114 at [19]-[21] where the Court said;

“19.

Third, the power to provide information is not something which can be regarded as other than an ingredient of the offence. If the phrase “information which it is in his power to give” does not require some proof on the part of the prosecution, those words might as well not be in the statute. They are there for a purpose. But that purpose is satisfied in the case of a person who produces no return at all or produces a blank one in this way: everyone has the power without further or specific proof to provide the minimal information “I do not know who the driver was; I know nothing of this vehicle”. That is information which satisfies the statutory requirement. It is information which it is in that person's power to give, and which may lead to the identification of the driver. That may happen in a number of ways. It may lead to the identification of the driver by elimination; it may lead to the identification of the driver through the process of showing that there has been an error through a random selection; it may mean that the police refocus their inquiries and retrace their steps over the information which has been given. In that way, an answer which says “I know nothing of the car and I have no connection with it” is both information which it is within the power of any person to give as a minimum and information which may lead to the identification of the driver.

20.

If the answer comes back, pursuant to the requirement, in the way which I have suggested might be regarded as the minimum information, it would then be incumbent on the prosecution, if they wished to make out an offence under section 172(3), to demonstrate that the defendant had the power to give more information than had been given; or it would be incumbent on the prosecution to prove that that asserted absence of knowledge was untrue. In that way, again, the provisions of section 172(2)(b) are given effect. It is an ingredient of the offence that there be information which it is in the power of the defendant to give, and it would be incumbent on the prosecution to prove it. But they do so in a case where the form is returned blank or returned not at all by simply pointing to the fact that every person has the power to give that minimum of information to which I have referred.

21.

I should just add that it is important in construing this provision to recognise that the specific defence in section 172(4) does not apply to “any other person” for the purposes of section 172(2)(b). There is a reason for that. It is because “any other person” does indeed have the power to provide the minimum information to which I have referred. Accordingly, there is no need for that specific defence to be provided as a general defence for all those who are the recipients of a notice for the purposes of section 172(2)(b). The keeper however is required under section 172(2)(a) to provide information which the police may specify; accordingly, a defence is necessary to cover his inability to provide it. But in section 172(2)(b) no such defence is provided because every other person is able to provide a minimum of information, even if negative in form. That is the reason, in my judgment, for the distinction in terms of defence between the two provisions.”

Therefore, the Respondent, not being the keeper at the relevant time, could not be expected to identify the driver, but would be expected to hold other “information” which “may lead to identification of the driver”.

Mr Micura was a litigant in person. He produced at the hearing short written submissions which he freely accepted had been in part written by Chat GPT. Those submissions referred to three cases. It transpired after some investigation by the Court and Mr Jarvis that one of those cases was cited as being in the Court of Appeal but was actually a decision of Moses J in the High Court. The second had the wrong reference but did appear to be a genuine case. The third did not appear to exist. This is an example of the extreme caution that needs to be exercised when receiving submissions from a litigant in person, which purport to refer to previous authorities. I should make it clear that I have no reason to believe that the Respondent knew the cases were either “fake” or with the wrong references, he had simply relied on Chat GPT.

Mr Micura submits that he had responded truthfully to the Justices that he did not know who the driver was and had passed the Notices on to his mother in law. He had acted with due diligence, as the Justices had found.

He said that the police had issued their Notices on the false assumption that he was the keeper of the vehicle at the time of the offence. Therefore, he was not correctly identified under s.172(2)(a) or (b).

He said that he had done everything that he reasonably could have done to give the police the information required. The Magistrates findings were open to them and there was no error of law in their conclusions.

I note that some of the Respondent’s submissions were simply wrong, presumably because Chat GPT had not merely made up the cases but mis-stated what the genuine cases said.