Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988

85 Service of documents. E+W+S

[F1 (A1) Subsections (A2) to (A4) apply in relation to an offence alleged to have taken place in England and Wales.

(A2) Subject to any requirement of this Part of this Act with respect to the manner in which a person may be provided with any such document, the person may be provided with the following documents in accordance with Criminal Procedure Rules (but without prejudice to any other method of providing them), that is to say—

(a) any of the statutory statements mentioned in Schedule 4 to this Act, and

(b) any of the documents mentioned in section 66(2) of this Act.

(A3) A notice to owner may be served on any person in accordance with Criminal Procedure Rules.

(A4) For the purposes of subsections (A2) and (A3)—

(a) Criminal Procedure Rules (as they have effect from time to time) apply to the document to be provided or (as the case may be) the notice to be served as if it were a document to be served in criminal proceedings before a magistrates’ court, and

(b) any magistrates’ court may discharge functions conferred on a court by those Rules in relation to such service.

(A5) Subsections (1) to (5) apply in relation to an offence alleged to have taken place outside England and Wales.]

(1) Subject to any requirement of this Part of this Act with respect to the manner in which a person may be provided with any such document, he may be provided with the following documents by post (but without prejudice to any other method of providing him with them), that is to say—

(a) any of the statutory statements mentioned in Schedule 4 to this Act, and

(b) any of the documents mentioned in section 66(2) of this Act.

(2) Where a notice requesting a hearing in respect of an offence is permitted by a fixed penalty notice or notice to owner relating to that offence to be given by post, section 7 of the M1 Interpretation Act 1978 (service of documents by post) shall apply as if that notice were permitted to be so given by this Act.

(3) A notice to owner may be served on any person—

(a) by delivering it to him or by leaving it at his proper address, or

(b) by sending it to him by post,

and where the person on whom such a notice is to be served is a body corporate it is duly served if it is served on the secretary or clerk of that body.

(4) For the purposes of this Part of this Act and of section 7 of the M2 Interpretation Act 1978 as it applies for the purposes of subsection (3) above the proper address of any person in relation to the service on him of a notice to owner is—

(a) in the case of the secretary or clerk of a body corporate, that of the registered or principal office of that body or the registered address of the person who is or was the registered keeper of the vehicle concerned at the time of service, and

(b) in any other case, his last known address at the time of service.

(5) In subsection (4) above, “registered address”, in relation to the registered keeper of a vehicle, means the address recorded in the record kept under [F2 the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994] with respect to that vehicle as being that person’s address.

Textual Amendments

F1 S. 85(A1)-(A5) inserted (28.6.2022) by Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 (c. 35), s. 51(3), Sch. 1 para. 11(6)

F2 Words in s. 85(5) substituted (1.9.1994) by 1994 c. 22, s. 63, Sch. 3 para. 25(1) (with s. 57(4))

Marginal Citations

M1 1978 c. 30.

M2 1978 c. 30.