First of all there are no penalty points for an expired MOT. The case would need to be summoned to court. Fines for no MOT are normally £150 - £200 and apart from in very exceptional cases -- and despite what you might be told -- an expired MOT will not normally invalidate a valid insurance policy.

A licence offence does mean penalty points. If your licence had been revoked then the charge is "not driving in accordance with a licence" and the police can lift the car. Usually they will not release it unless it is collected by a licenced driver who is insured for the vehicle.

In terms of the revocation if you were summoned for a motoring offence but failed to respond and the case went through the court system there is a very good chance you had penalty points you did not know about. The reason might be that you failed to keep your address up to date on either your logbook or driving licence (both of which are an offence with a potential £1,000 fine, but rarely actioned).

If your licence was revoked in 2006 but not suspended until 2007 then that suggests a conviction in 2005-2006 of which you were not aware. The court would have imposed a penalty but the points imposed would now have expired so you now have a (potentially) clean licence. That said, you have been driving illegally since the revocation came into play and you no longer have a valid licence.

In most cases a revocation mean you must resit your test. The delay in the revocation (to 2007) was supposedly to provide you with an opportunity to update your details. It appears that you failed to do so.

This case is potentially very nasty. Although driving a car with no MOT will not invalidate your insurance driving a car with no licence (or a revoked licence) will certainly do so. The licence offence could thus be escalated to an insurance offence which could mean 6-8 penalty points. The licence offence brought at the same time would mean that the court would lean towards the higher end of the points scale and the fine would also be higher.

I certainly think you need detailed (free) legal advice so you can take an informed decision and if you write to me at asklucy@honestjohn.co.uk I will set up a free legal support call.

Edited by LucyBC on 27/05/2010 at 20:57

Pleased to hear they returned the car. You are entitled to receive the information relating to the offence (not least because you need to declare it for insurance purposes for five years).

Things to think about are when you last moved house and did you keep your driving licence and any logbook up to date? The other possibility is someone named you as a driver for an offence you may (or may not) have committed.

The process for almost any offence is to send a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) to the registered address of the veihicle. This is the only route of contact for a vehicle caught on camera. The onus is on you to keep your address current and to respond to any post sent to you.

If you do not respond to a NIP the chances are that a prosecution will be brought under Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 for failing to identify driver/provide information.

If a summons is sent and you fail to respond you may be convicted in your absence. It is up to you to keep the DVLA informed and respond to post. All they need to do is to serve documents on the address they have for you.

The information will be provided as and when the case goes to court.

However if this is a "failure to provide information" case and they served on the address you supplied them then you you may find it difficult to overturn it.

In theory the DVLA dumped the information because it is out of date - endorsements disappear after four years. The chances are the police could trace it as part of an enhanced search.

My guess is you were flashed on a camera and the ticket received no response, went through the courts and you were given a penalty, failed to send licence in so they revoked it.

Two obvious problems there:

• failure to keep address up to date is a potential £1000 fine
• if your licence was revoked you aren't allowed to drive until you are reinstated

This could be treated as a matter of amusement by a court on a good day but you never know what is going to happen - you could get a difficult bench in which case they can go anywhere.

If you admit the MOT offence (as you seem to) I would be inclined to advise you pay the fine and only start digging on the other offence if they refuse to reissue your licence or raise the spectre of bringing charges for other offences beyond the MOT.

They may well drop it - but from a legal perspective if the police served a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) accompanied by a request for information on the address they had for you in 2005/6 then the chances are it was properly served.

If you did not then provide information or failed to respond to the summons the court can convict and the points should have been added to your licence.

The reason it works this way is because otherwise people could register their cars to addresses other than their own and claim that they had not received the NIP as a defence. The presumption of service if a letter is sent to the last known address largely closes this potential loophole.

What happens next in your case depends on whether the officer gave you a verbal NIP at the scene. Normally a verbal NIP means he advises you he is reporting you for an offence or offences. If you are stopped at the scene and the officer believes offences have been committed a verbal NIP will normally be issued.

If a verbal NIP was issued at the scene then the police have six months from date of offence to send a document leading to a summons to the magistrates courts.

However if you were not given a verbal NIP on the licence/MOT offence then a notice of intended prosecution will have to be issued by post within 14 days of the offence or the case will fall on procedural grounds.

Although MOT offences don't carry penalty points they are normally dealt with by a summons to court.

At this stage I can do little more except to give you information.

The MOT case is an absolute offence - you had an MOT or did not - so if there was no MOT the only option is to offer a mitigation. The licence similarly although we may be able to argue "Special Reasons" on the grounds that you were unaware you had no licence. If the court accepts the Special Reasons argument they may well not opt to penalise you.

The thing to do now is to keep me informed of the progress of the case and any correspondence you receive in relation to it.

How old are you?

Licence expired at 70 and failed to do the 3 year renewal = licence revoked.

Police do not retain record of convictions ( points) (when where and what for) for motoring offences but these are placed on your Drivers Record at DVLC so if this is clean why have DVLC revoked the Licence?

Its DVLC you want to chase.

dvd

Yes appreciate that Lucy but there are other reasons for revoking a Licence i.e. New Driver and disability cases.

My thrust was that DVLA seem at times to be law unto themselves (80 Sorn fine) and whereas in the old days Plod get a record of all convictions tiz no longer re driving offences attracting points which are now on the drivers record at DVLA.

dvd