Anyone ever had a fixed penalty overturned?

[Steve_Holt]

Ill be brief.

bought car June last year.
Thought I had set up insurance.

Pulled by Wiltshire police in december. No insurance. Accepted fixed penalty at roadside, 6 points £1200. Bought insurance at roadside to save car getting siezed.
Phoned insurer next day (Who I thought I was insured with since June) they say it never went past quote stage.

Contacted by this insurer approx two months ago saying that there was a glitch in the quote engine and my policy was never set up. I phoned them and spoke to team dealing with this issue. Explained. They have since sent me a letter saying they will indemnify me for the day in question I was pulled by police.

My barrister asked the central ticketing court team to overturn it but they say they cant as it never went to court.
My barrister then asked Wiltshire police to overturn it, but they have said this is not possible as they feel i have plead 'guilty' by accepting the fixed penalty (I only accepted it and paid fine etc. after I phoned the insurer the day after and they said I was never insured.)

Really not happy at insurer. Is there anything I can do to get these 6 points taken off? Has this ever happened before?

Thanks fora ny help.

[R0b]

Hello

Not particularly my area but maybe des8 might be able to assist.

On a more general note, paying the fine and taking the points would be deemed as an admission of guilt and if you didn't believe you were guilty you should have disputed it which meant going to court and arguing your case. I don't believe there is an automatic right of appeal for a fixed penalty notice so you are sort of caught in limbo, and it might be an expensive job (if you don't have any legal insurance cover) to try to get it overturned if it was even possible.

If there is no option to appeal without incurring a substantial amount of costs, you could however, look to be compensated for the 6 points given to you as a result. The difficulty is then quantifying the compensation amount for those 6 points and I am not even what sort of criteria you could use to determine the amount.

Hopefully Des might be able to shed more light on this.

[des8]

hi
I don't see anyway of having the penalty overturned.
you would probably have to petition the Queen (via the Secretary of State for Justice) for a pardon, and I don't really see that being a possibility.

the other option (to recover your money) is to take on the insurers.
you only accepted the penalty because the insurers wrongly stated you were uninsured at the time of the alleged offence.
They have since corrected this, so IMO should be reimbursing your costs
the cost of the six points on your licence could be quantified by comparing insurance quotes with and without the points, and obtain 4 quotes with points
having been received 4, 3, 2, 1 years ago (IN 10 is not received kindly by insurers.. almost as bad as DR10!)

If the insurers are unwilling to come to the table, I would first suggest a complaint to the FOS,
if they don't come up with an acceptable solution you could then possibly initiate a court claim.