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Hi guys,

I was summoned by the DVLA to court for keeping an unlicensed vehicle on the road. In my defence, the car wasn't mine and i need transport urgently but i should have checked. Unfortunately this negligence has become a problem for me.



Can anyone help me please.

I am in a similar situation.

I have a court fine for a minor offense. I have declared it on my application - havent heard back yet. When I rung the UKBA after i had applied - they said any court fine = rehab period (5 years), i.e. application will fail.

Guidance notes however, say a single unspent conviction for a minor offense, resulting in small fine may be overlooked.

So, it's a little ambiguous what the rule actually is when it comes to the crunch.

'The honest man has nothing to hide'..I wouldn't recommend omitting something because you think it is minor. That's up to them to decide!

I don't know the official outcome of my application yet, but I have a bad feeling. If I were you, i'd wait until 5 years since the fine had passed. Then you'd have nothing to worry about and could fill in your form honestly.

Do let us know the outcome, mate.
Just to add to your comments, i was informed by UKBA that fines £50 and over are not considered minor

NiiKpani wrote:Do let us know the outcome, mate.
Just to add to your comments, i was informed by UKBA that fines £50 and over are not considered minor

If it was not your car why were you summoned by court? It is not clear can you explain in detail.

droogish wrote:I am in a similar situation.

I have a court fine for a minor offense. I have declared it on my application - havent heard back yet. When I rung the UKBA after i had applied - they said any court fine = rehab period (5 years), i.e. application will fail.

Guidance notes however, say a single unspent conviction for a minor offense, resulting in small fine may be overlooked.

So, it's a little ambiguous what the rule actually is when it comes to the crunch.

'The honest man has nothing to hide'..I wouldn't recommend omitting something because you think it is minor. That's up to them to decide!

I don't know the official outcome of my application yet, but I have a bad feeling. If I were you, i'd wait until 5 years since the fine had passed. Then you'd have nothing to worry about and could fill in your form honestly.

What was your offence?

I was summoned as i was the one driving it at the time. I had gone to the dvla office on other business with it and their cameras picked it up. So i was told i was the one who was keeping an unlicensed vehicle on the road at the time

NiiKpani wrote:I was summoned as i was the one driving it at the time. I had gone to the dvla office on other business with it and their cameras picked it up. So i was told i was the one who was keeping an unlicensed vehicle on the road at the time

As per guide, driving with no tax is not minor offence. Declare it on your application and provide a proper covering letter to request them to consider as a minor offence. When are you applying?

I have been due since the end of last year. I dont know on what basis i can ask them to make an exception in my case. I only hope they dont check records from Her Majestys Court Services (HMCS) as it does not show up on PNC or CRB

I would declare it if I were you. Explain that it was not your car and you didn't know tax was unpaid. It does sound lame, but it is the truth and they may sympathise. If not, they will reject it and you wait five years. This is the worst that can happen if you disclose the information.

If you hide this and they find out, they will reject your citizenship application and they could charge you with fraud. The consequences are a lot worse!

"SECTION 3: GOOD CHARACTER
To be of good character you should have shown respect for the rights and freedoms of the United Kingdom, observed its laws and fulfilled your duties and obligations as a resident of the United Kingdom. Checks will be carried out to ensure that the information you give is correct.

If you are not honest about the information you provide and you are naturalised on the basis of incorrect or fraudulent information you will be liable to have British citizenship taken away (deprivation) and be prosecuted. It is a criminal offence to make a false declaration knowing that it is untrue."

You must declare it in your application as this was a conviction in the court. You should submit a letter explaining why the conviction happened. As far as I am aware, if this is the only offence you have committed then its highly likely that UKBA will grant your application.

Did you applied for it following the issue with you or you waited, if applied can I know the result, I am in the same boat.

Thanks

to be honest, driving uninsured or without tax are not regarded as minor offences, and many experts say that there is no point if you have one of these convictions and its not spent.
but then I have known a few people who got naturalised with these convictions, as they had very good explanations of why the offence happened. eg even if you drive thinking it has insurance, and then somehow it turned out that that car didnt have insurance, then you will get convicted. the reason being that this is regarded as a "strict liability offence". yes, even if you didnt do it deliberately, you will still get convicted. majistrates have no discretion to let you off.
so people who are in this situation must consult a good advisor, who can point out any mitigations as to why the offence happened.
there is no guarantee that the naturalisation will be granted even when you have done the explaining.
If someone is say half way through their "spent" time from a conviction, then the best way would be to wait for the offence to be "spent" before you apply. this way there is no way you would risk you application fee of 700 pounds plus.

it would be good to hear from memebers or advisors on this board who had a succesful application with this kind of offences.

NiiKpani wrote:Hi guys,

I was summoned by the DVLA to court for keeping an unlicensed vehicle on the road. In my defence, the car wasn't mine and i need transport urgently but i should have checked. Unfortunately this negligence has become a problem for me.

The prosecutor adviced me to plead guilty indicating that i would not have a criminal record. In hindsight perhaps i shouldn't have but i wanted the case wrapped up. Subsequently i was fined £50 which i paid.

Now i am due to naturalise. A CRB chck and PNC check on me didnt come up with any information about the court incident so i applied straight to the courts to see if they still had record of the case, whch they do.


My question is: do i need to declare this on my application form??

It would seem that others have had success with worse offences. I called the homeoffice and they said any fine no matter the amount if issued in court would attract the rehabilitation period and would be refused, which is contrary to most cases i have read about here.

Since they have not mentioned it on their guidance notes that they check with HMCS (her majestys court services) i was thinking of leaving the information out since i see it to be minor. However if i still have a chance of success if declare i'd prefer to be completely transparent.

Can anyone help me please.

I dont see why you have to declare it as it seems to me that you have commited and offence paid a fine but was NOT CONVICTED of the offence (as it does not show up on your CRB either).

If you had been convicted, you would have had your finger prints, DNA and photographs taken at the police station. So in my opinion, you DO NOT have a conviction and can answer NO to the question on the form.

n.b: this is my opinion from different stuffs that I have read, if someone is 100% sure that I'm wrong then please correct me.

Driving without insurance is clearly a criminal offence, and there is 5 years rehabilitation period for it. It is very clearly mentioned in the UKBA guidance as a serious offence. It must be declared. Yes, it might not appear on CRB check, as this is not a recordable offence. A recordable offence is something that police puts onto PNC (police national computer). Please note that UKBA doesnt do a CRB check. The CRB check is done by organisations which do not have access to PNC. These organisation have to send a reqeust to Criminal Records bureau to do a search. Criminal records bureau then searches PNC and provides information. There are other sources as well from where Criminal recods bureau get information, but that topic is not relevant about our discussion here. UKBA has direct access to PNC so they can check your record with a click of a mouse. They dont need to ask any other department to do a check. There is additional information that police keeps on their local computers. Everytime you call the police, you get stopped, given a producer, given a warning or anything involved with police get recorded as a log entry onto this computer. UKBA checks both the records. Additionally, PNC has a link to DVLA records. When you get a driving conviction or even a fixed penalty its surely recorded on DVLA computer. When UKBA checks the PNC for crimial records, they fetch the data from DVLA as well, and this way driving convictions are also revealed to them. There is more to this topic but I think this in enough for now. Hope this helps.

mr lookforward.

this is really good stuff right there. would you kindly tell me more, like the other agencies checked apart from pnc and dvla.what about hmcs etc?...good stuff

UKBA doesnt reveal all the information about what checks they exactly carry out on applicants. As far as I know, HMCS doesnt have a central computer to hold the information of convictions. This information is available from individual courts. I do not know exactly, but I think they do check with local courts of the applicant. Recently I came across someone who was refused naturalisation because of an unspent conviction from 2007, and this conviction did not appear on PNC, but still UKBA found out, a pointer that that they do check with local courts. As far as DVLA information is concerned, I have already explained it in my last post.

Did anyone get through successfully inspite of having a conviction.....?

Yes many people have, but not all convictions are same. Its not worth generalising all the convictions.

Mrlookingforward,

in a case where one receives a court summons for a hearing in say...October but wishes to apply for naturalisation in September, must one declare a conviction even thought one have not been for the hearing?

Either way, I am willing to pay the fine before the court hearing but the funds would not be available until a few days before the court hearing.

Should this offence be declared, still?

In addition to previous questions, will UKBA make checks for convictions in other EU countries, eg Germany?

Any experience with "any other country" convictions?

Aha wrote:In addition to previous questions, will UKBA make checks for convictions in other EU countries, eg Germany?

Any experience with "any other country" convictions?

I don't think so.. in that case they should be able to check each country database!

R- wrote: I dont see why you have to declare it as it seems to me that you have commited and offence paid a fine but was NOT CONVICTED of the offence (as it does not show up on your CRB either).

If you had been convicted, you would have had your finger prints, DNA and photographs taken at the police station. So in my opinion, you DO NOT have a conviction and can answer NO to the question on the form.

n.b: this is my opinion from different stuffs that I have read, if someone is 100% sure that I'm wrong then please correct me.

If the person was fined by a court, then he/she was indeed convicted of the offence. Magistrates only impose a fine as a sentence where someone has entered a plea of guilty or been found guilty. Whether someone's DNA and fingerprints are taken depends not on whether one has been convicted, but rather on the severity of the offence. Simply being charged with a recordable offence allows the policy to take one's DNA and fingerprints.

Where a fixed penalty notice is given, a person is not charged with an offence, but it instead given the opportunity to avoid a charge by paying a given amount. If he or she wishes to pay no fine on the basis of his or her innocence, then he or she can ask for a court hearing, which will often lead to a charge being filed in court. Fixed penalty notices are not convictions, but the UKBA will still take them into account if an applicant has more than one within a year of applying.

Every unspent conviction must be declared on an immigration application. If you are caught lying, then you will almost certainly be refused and will likely face more severe penalties. One who is found lying on a naturalisation application is normally told that the lie will result in any naturalisation application made within the next decade being refused. You could also be prosecuted for the lie, as lying on an immigration application is a crime.

Your only lawful options are:
1. Try your luck, apply before the conviction if spent, and provide a very good explanation as to why the conviction should be treated as minor.
2. Wait until the conviction is spent.

The main risk to Option 1 is that you may well find your application refused and you will have wasted hundreds of pounds if this happens. The main downside to Option 2 is that you have to wait some time and apply when fees are substantially higher.

Twin wrote:Mrlookingforward,

in a case where one receives a court summons for a hearing in say...October but wishes to apply for naturalisation in September, must one declare a conviction even thought one have not been for the hearing?

Either way, I am willing to pay the fine before the court hearing but the funds would not be available until a few days before the court hearing.

Should this offence be declared, still?

If you read the form AN carefully, I am sure you have to declare any pending prosecutions, ie you have to declare that you have been charged and summoned to the court. As per the guidelines, the HO will only make the decision after consulting the court concerned, and most likely hold the decision until the outcome of the court case.
Another point is, that there that once you have received the summons then there is no way of paying the fine before the court hearing in most cases. Again depends on what the charges are. If its a traffic offence then there is now no way of avoiding the conviction.

mrlookforward wrote:

Twin wrote:Mrlookingforward,

in a case where one receives a court summons for a hearing in say...October but wishes to apply for naturalisation in September, must one declare a conviction even thought one have not been for the hearing?

Either way, I am willing to pay the fine before the court hearing but the funds would not be available until a few days before the court hearing.

Should this offence be declared, still?

If you read the form AN carefully, I am sure you have to declare any pending prosecutions, ie you have to declare that you have been charged and summoned to the court. As per the guidelines, the HO will only make the decision after consulting the court concerned, and most likely hold the decision until the outcome of the court case.
Another point is, that there that once you have received the summons then there is no way of paying the fine before the court hearing in most cases. Again depends on what the charges are. If its a traffic offence then there is now no way of avoiding the conviction.

In that case, I have been misinformed by the DVLA. The DVLA had advised that should I pay the fine, their charges would be dropped and that there would not be any case to answer. I intend making the payment before naturalisation but if it paying would not necessarily help my naturalisation, i'd rather put naturalisation on hold and attend the hearing.

N.B: I have not been convicted of any offence yet.

My application for citizenship got approved today. I had one SP30 offence that i challenged in court. Total time to recieve approval: 4 months!

Good luck to everyone!!!!!!