Was passed this letter today by a very very nice lady

TAYSIDE POLICE

Justine Curran Chief Constable

Our Ref:
Your Ref:

Direct Dial:
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Date: 21 June 2010



Dear Mrs

LICENSING QUERY
ILLEGALLY PLYING FOR HIRE
OFFENCE UNDER S 143 ROAD TRAFFIC ACT 1988

We thank you for your email of 24 March 2010 and apologise for the delay in responding.

To address that email and clarify our position we would advise that in our view there are two distinct issues here albeit arising from the same circumstances. They are:-

• driving without insurance (Road Traffic Act 1988, s143) and
• operating a taxi in respect of which its operation requires to be but is not licensed (Civic Government (S) Act 1982 s 21(1)) ;
• ancillary to the above it may also be that the facts of either of these scenarios are also a breach of licence condition, may be referred to the Committee and dealt with by them under the suspension procedure.

I attach a note on each point and in relation to the Mumford Solihull and Telford cases you cited.

Presumably this will bring matters to a close as it appears that we are in agreement as follows (in summary):-

• if a vehicle is not covered in terms of the insurance policy, by exclusion or inclusion, then a charge will lie irrespective of whether or not the insurance company concerned is prepared to provided cover retrospectively (in Mumford v Hardy (1956))
• despite the EU directives cited therein in respect of 3rd party liability those directives do not affect the criminal liability of persons who do not comply with their policies of insurance and a charge still lies (Singh Case )
• the above Solihull case relied upon the Telford case which held that cover under the policy was a matter of construction of the document; the offence was committed even if the policy covered third party claims if the risk itself was not covered.

In short this means that even if an insurer later indicates that they will provide cover in these circumstances a charge will still lie.







I am sure you appreciate that the matter of the charge lies with the police but that the Procurator Fiscal has complete discretion whether or not to proceed to prosecute that charge.


Yours faithfully



Temporary Superintendent
Deputy Divisional Commander