FPN for no insurance - but we had it all along

[sportinguista]

My husband passed his test in September of this year and we bought our first car in October, sorted insurance, tax everything and off we go. In November he was pulled up early one Sunday morning as having no insurance, he rang me as cops decided to tow car. I went back and looked at insurance docs and there's 1 digit diference in the reg no on them an error - B instead of D. The incorrect reg number doesn't belong to any existing car and the model/make etc are correct. Told the cops it was an error but they still towed.

Anyway insurance company investigate and it's their error, admitted, sorted, letter of indemnity and £300 compensation. We get the car from pound early Monday morning and I forward all the documentation including the letter of indemnity to the officer who stopped my husband and she wrote back to say that "I have cancelled the ticket and the matter won’t progress any further. ". All good you'd think?

Fast forward to Saturday morning and we get a FPN through the door for the offence. Obviously it gives 2 options. One is to accept 6 points and £300 fine which would mean he loses his licence and has admitted he drove without insurance ( not true as Admiral have stated he was covered and any claim would have been paid with indemnity letter to prove it plus the acceptance of the PC of that letter) which leaves him with going to court as there is no way to submit any kind of evidence/appeal to prevent it going to that stage and waste public money.

I've emailed the officer ( who inevitably is on an RDO) and she will be back in Monday as I need to find out if it could be an oversight on her part or an admin issue.

What are our options as we cannot really afford a solicitor, either way we're a bit stuffed and the crux of the matter is at no point was he uninsured - in fact it's fully comp!

I have all the evidence I gathered to prove it was the insurance company but they have admitted fault anyway so can he still be found guilty and of what?

I'm surprised the insurers have accepted liability, the onus is on you to check your documents and you should have noticed the error.
However, if they have accepted liability then you need to get a letter from them stating you could not reasonably have known your vehicle was not on the MID. Mistakes do happen.

We have letters stating it was their mistake, we forwarded them to the police officer who emailed back accepting them and stating that the matter would go no further and she had cancelled the ticket. Is it possible she could be over-ruled by the systems they have in place?

The insurance company conducted a full investigation which involved listening to the call and their system was not followed which meant they accepted liability and paid the compensation plus the letter of indemnity stating that full cover was in place at the time.

You don't need a solicitor to go to court, you can self represent. Were the insurance company aware your husband had been stopped for driving without insurance?

Yes, the insurance company are fully aware, they apologised for the error and awarded compensation on that basis, rectified everything within hours which was why we could collect the car so quickly as the insurance was already in place. He was at no time uninsured in their view. It was just that incorrect reg for non-existent car was uploaded to MID. It's our first car so we are very much still learning stuff.

I reckon we'd have to self-rep but given the evidence I have plus the PC stating she had cancelled the ticket it would look very odd if they said she lied/failed to do it and in any case he's guilty of nothing but an incompetent insurance rep which I'm not sure is a criminal offence...

Ok. So was the incorrect registration just uploaded to the MID or is it also on your documents? If it's on your documents it will be argued that you are fully responsible for checking them.
However, you have written confirmation from the police that the matter will not be taken further so I imagine this is an admin error.

It was on the docs too but they admitted their procedures were not followed, it was also extremely small on the docs. I'm hoping that it may be an admin error and the PC can provide some answers tomorrow. I just don't want to go to court if it can be avoided as it likely will waste time. We certainly weren't aware of the error until he was stopped so at no point was he or I aware that it would flag on the ANPR as not insured. She could see it was taxed and was aware that for the incorrect reg no such car existed, so it was impossible we had insured another car with similar reg.