A suicidal man has been convicted for not insuring his car when he had been hospitalised with a mental health breakdown, in the latest fast-track courts injustice.
The 26-year-old says the bill on his 14-year-old BMW went unpaid when he “exceptionally unwell” and in the care of an NHS crisis team.
His parents had gone to the extreme length of hiding the car for his own protection, as he lost his grip on reality and spiralled into self-harm.
The man, from Great Yarmouth, set out the heartbreaking circumstances as he was criminally prosecuted by the DVLA for not insuring the car.
Despite his plea of “exceptional circumstances”, he was handed a criminal conviction, in the latest troubling case to emerge from the scandal-hit Single Justice Procedure (SJP).
The SJP system allows magistrates to deal with low-level criminal offences in private and based on written evidence alone.
It was created a decade ago in a cost-cutting drive, and has been exposed in recent times as deeply flawed.
One of the problems is that mitigation letters from defendants, submitted alongside a guilty plea, are routinely not seen by prosecutors, meaning the chance to withdraw cases that are not in the public interest is missed.
The young man from Great Yarmouth put forward the contact number of his mental health doctor for corroborating evidence of his plight.
“During the period of December 2024 and March 2025, I was under crisis mental health service for complex PTSD”, he wrote.
He said he lost his job, struggled to manage his finances, and “became very unaware of reality due to the medication I was on”.
“My parents hid the vehicle behind their house in a way to stop me from getting into further issues and wasn’t intentionally trying to avoid insurance”, he wrote, adding that the car was parked on private land.
“I believe with the surrounding circumstances this was appropriate and as well managed as it could have been”, he continued.
“During this time I made attempts to disfigure my face as well as other incidents and wasn’t in a good place with views to end my life.
“Once the team handed me over to community mental health and got me in a more stable mindset one of the first things I done was list my vehicle as SORN.
“If I was in a more stable place this wouldn’t have happened.”
The man, who was written to with news of the prosecution in June, said he continues to be “in a fragile place”.
“I do not deny that my vehicle was uninsured but with the considerations of being placed in a mental health centre in the middle of December and multiple severe episodes over the following months, this is exceptional circumstance and was dealt with efficiently.”
The man was sentenced last week by a magistrate in Sheffield, who spared him a fine and imposed a 12-month conditional discharge with a £26 court fee to pay.
The magistrate apparently did not opt to send the case back to the DVLA for a fresh consideration of the public interest in light of the mitigation letter.
The DVLA has backed the idea of prosecutors in the SJP system automatically reading all mitigation letters, so that appropriate cases can been dropped.
The idea is backed by magistrates and is under consideration by the government as part of a planned package of reforms.
The BBC – which prosecutes hundreds of people a month for not paying their TV Licence - is opposing this idea, suggesting magistrates should be more proactive in sending cases back to prosecutors.
Courts Minister Sarah Sackman has not set a timetable for SJP reform, and is allowing the system to continue to operate unchanged despite the steady stream of injustices that emerge.
