On the Papers: What to Do When a Single Justice Procedure Notice Arrives: The Fifteen Business Days, Why Pleading Guilty by Post Costs More, and How to Get a Real Hearing - Softcover

Prior, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798173127327

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

It is not a fine. It is a criminal prosecution, and one magistrate will decide it alone, on the papers, with nobody in the room.

The Single Justice Procedure now accounts for fifty-nine per cent of everything that comes into the magistrates' courts of England and Wales. In the first quarter of 2026 alone the Ministry of Justice recorded 227,057 of these cases. Most people tick guilty, post the form back, and never learn what they gave away.

The deadline is fifteen business days, not twenty-one. Rule 24.9(4) of the Criminal Procedure Rules says so, and nothing in the envelope explains that business days are not days.

The court is not allowed to hear you speak. Section 16A(3) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980: the court "may not hear any oral evidence" and may consider only the papers and "any written submission that the accused makes with a view to mitigation of sentence". Whatever you do not write down does not exist.

And the money page is the expensive one. Leave it blank and section 126 of the Sentencing Act 2020, which names this procedure in terms, lets the court "make such determination as it considers appropriate" about your finances. The fine is then calculated on a figure somebody assumed about you. Section 127 can give it back, and hardly anybody has heard of it.

One sentence stops the whole procedure. Section 16B(2): give notice that you do not desire to be tried this way and the court "may not" do it, at any time before the trial, with no deadline at all. You get a summons and a proper bench instead.

This book is the whole procedure, in plain English.

How to count the real deadline.
The four boxes on the form and exactly what each one starts, including the automatic online conviction that converts into a criminal record at the end of the fifth business day.
What the prosecutor must serve, and what happens when it does not all arrive at the same time.
How to fill in the financial statement so the fine is set on your actual income.
The defences that are real, and the ones people write that never work.
Disqualification, penalty points, and the warning section 16C(2) says you are owed before your licence goes.
And if you were convicted without ever knowing: the statutory declaration that makes the proceedings void, within twenty-one days of the day you found out, with an express power to accept it late.

It is honest throughout. It will not tell you to plead not guilty to buy time, it says plainly what refusing the procedure costs you, and it warns that an appeal to the Crown Court is the one route where the sentence can go up.

Nothing to buy. No firm to hire. Free help named.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798173127327
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138