NIP in the post, quick question
 

The girlfriend got caught speeding. She was doing 42mph in a 30.

The date of offence was the 1/06/06, the nip arrived through the post on the 13th.

It wasn't sent recorded delivey. Should I throw it in the bin and say she never received it?

This would mean the notification would be outwith the 14 days?

cheers

The NIP has to be dispatched such that it would normally be expected to arrive within 14 days. Once it is dispatched the law deems you to have received it so throwing it away will do you no good at all. If you throw it away and say you never saw it then you perjure yourself, you don't really want to bring yourself down to their level do you? Exactly. There are perfectly reasonable defences available to you which allow you to stay well within the law while ensuring that if they have acted outwith the law, and every NIP so far that I am aware of has been outwith the law, then you have no case to answer.

In fact www.pepipoo.com makes it so easy that they even have a wizard where you just enter your details and it prints a PACE witness statement for you. Simple as that, stick it in the post special delivery and you are acting within they law and they are now in trouble.

no throw it away, and when the next one comes do the same and deny all knowledge, this does work too, pm me if you want any more info

Perhaps, just so the risks are understood, you might care to detail the possible sentence for perjury. Ignoring the implication in your post that people should lie in court, or to the police, there is the moral issue and many people are still basically honest and have no wish to become involved in telling lies.

There is a simple reason why, sometimes, throwing the NIP away may work. However, because this is entirely random it depends upon luck and is not, therefore, a reliable defence. Also if it requires you to lie to police or in court then it has very serious implications and you should never be in a position of bringing yourself to their level. The fact is that some forces have a substantial number of NIPs which are "ignored" and so they send a second NIP. If there is no reply to this then the case is usually sent to a special team who deal with such things. If they happen to be very busy, or under staffed, then they may decide at a given time to just bin all cases where the speed was less than, say, 15mph over the limit. However, you can't be sure of this happening, you can't know at what speed they might set their threshold and you have to consider that a court may not be too impressed to hear that you threw documents relating to your case into the bin, assuming you decide not to lie. With this in mind ignoring the NIP may work but it is certainly not a tactic that would be recommended.

They really ought to bite the bullet and send it by recorded delivery. Cheapskates!

Les

And then there would be lots of people refusing to sign for the letters or signing it Mickey Mouse.

I know VAL 113R is based in Scotland, where according to pepipoo, the PACE statment doesnt apply [:(], It recommends trying the "unsigned" method.

Daz

'She was doing 42mph in a 30.'

Perhaps she should just pay the fine and slow down a bit, after all 30 liomits are there for a reason, 85 on a clear motorway, fair enough but 42 in a 30.

Mayve VAL113R should have said 'alledgedly' .......

Dave

I recently got out of a speeding fine.
PM me if you want further details

Actually the one thing they are not allowed to do is to send it 2nd class post. If it arrives 2nd class, and it would appear that a few forces have reverted to 2nd class recently for some strange reason, then it is invalid and you will have no case to answer. Of course you don't want to mention this to them until you are sure there is no possibility of them getting a 1st class one to you within the 14 day limit.

There also seems to be an increasing trend back towards NIPs being sent out such that they would not be expected to arrive within 14 days. While it looked like they were all wise to this it is something that is worth watching out for again. It seems that where they get a backlog they sometimes just send the late ones anyhow as the vast majority of people pay up without asking any questions.

So, two old fashion defences that we thought had long since been resolved by the partnerships are once again worth looking out for.

I didn't realise that VAL113R was in Scotland and, of course, that changes things quite a bit. Once again though www.pepipoo.com is your friend :-)