Pensioner with Alzheimer’s convicted over unpaid bill in car insurance mishap
A 91-year-old Alzheimer’s patient was found guilty after his car, which he could no longer drive, was left uninsured for less than two weeks.
The pensioner, whose name was not disclosed, was taken to court by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) over the unpaid bill for his 10-year-old Renault Megane.
His son wrote a letter explaining that his father’s driver’s license was confiscated due to his illness and the vehicle was parked in the driveway.
He said that he insured the vehicle for five days to inspect it in preparation for the sale, and then the vehicle remained uninsured for 11 days while the sale was ongoing.
But the letter was not enough to prevent his aging father from being convicted of possessing a motor vehicle that did not meet insurance requirements.
This is the latest case to emerge from the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), a fast-track court process that allows judges to hand down convictions in private hearings.
The Labor government has spent the last year considering whether to reform the SJP process; There is growing evidence that vulnerable and poorly elderly people are regularly convicted of not keeping up with household bills.
The pensioner was prosecuted for a delay in car insurance in September last year, and a letter regarding criminal proceedings was sent to him last month.
His son checked the box on the form stating that he was filing a criminal complaint on behalf of his father and wrote: “I am filling out this application on behalf of my father, who has Alzheimer’s disease and whose driver’s license was canceled due to his disease.
“We bought the car when we sold it and parked it in our driveway.
“We had car insurance with LV from September 5th to September 11th so we were insured to get the Inspection done.
“The car was sold on September 22, so it was uninsured for a very short period of time and was parked in the driveway.”
His son also underlined that his father was born in 1934.
Magistrates conducting SJP investigations have the power to adjourn a case and notify the prosecution if they believe a case may not be in the public interest based on the details provided in mitigation.
The DVLA acknowledged that due to the design of the SJP system it did not routinely view mitigation letters and often did not know whether a defendant’s vulnerabilities had been identified.
The agency called on the government to reform the SJP to ensure prosecutors see all mitigating letters before cases go to court, and urged defendants to contact them directly if there is important information to disclose.
The pensioner, from Wimborne in Dorset, was sentenced by judge Eve Cooper at Leicester Magistrates’ Court.
Ms Cooper does not appear to have referred the case back to the DVLA for a public interest check, but instead of ordering the pensioner to pay a fine, she did order a full discharge of the case.
