Convicted without knowing: what Sadiq Khan’s car tax case shows about the Single Justice Procedure
On 18 August 2026 a single magistrate at Herefordshire Magistrates’ Court convicted the Mayor of London of keeping an untaxed vehicle. The vehicle was a blue Nissan Micra, first registered in 2002. Its tax had run out in September 2025, and it was recorded as untaxed on 24 January. He was fined £220 and ordered to pay £85 in costs and £35.84 of unpaid duty. He was not there. Nobody was.
A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan says the car is not his, and that someone registered it in his name without his knowledge. “This is a scam,” the spokesperson said. The DVLA, which brought the prosecution, says it is examining the case.
The court papers also show where the DVLA had been writing. Transport for London, which the Mayor chairs, has its offices on the ninth floor of 5 Endeavour Square in Stratford. The letters went to 9 Endeavour Square, two minutes’ walk away — a building whose top floor is a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.
This is not a driving offence
It is worth saying plainly, because this site is about driving offences and this is not one. Keeping an untaxed vehicle carries no penalty points, no disqualification and no consequence for a licence. The DVLA prosecutes it, not the police.
What it shares with the offences on this site is the procedure. The case was decided under the Single Justice Procedure, which took around 196,000 cases in a single quarter of 2025, roughly 78% of them summary motoring matters. Speeding alone accounted for 31% of defendants. Same magistrate, same paperwork, same silence.
The offence is unusual. The failure is not.
If you have had a notice of your own, what it is and what your 21 days mean is the place to start.
The procedure assumes the letter arrives
Nothing about it is designed to catch a wrong address.
A single magistrate reads the papers, advised by a legal adviser. There is no hearing, no prosecutor in the room and no defendant, and they cannot hear live evidence from anybody. What reaches the magistrate is a file showing that a notice was sent and that no plea came back. On paper, a man who has decided to ignore the court and a man whose post is going to the wrong side of the square look exactly the same.
In the most recent published figures, 74% of defendants entered no plea at all. Nobody knows how many of them never saw the notice, because nothing in the procedure asks.
If a conviction is the first you hear of it
There is a way back, and it is specific.
Under section 16E of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 you can make a statutory declaration: a signed statement that you did not know about the notice or the proceedings until a date you give, that date being after the court began dealing with the case.
Four things about it are worth knowing before you try.
The 21 days run from when you found out, not from the conviction and not from the date on any letter. Miss that and you are asking the court for an indulgence rather than exercising a right.
The declaration alone is not enough. You have to serve your response to the original notice at the same time — your plea. This is where people come unstuck. They send the declaration, feel they have dealt with it, and have not.
The effect is not a reduction or a reconsideration. Everything after the notice is void. The conviction, the fine, the costs, the lot.
The case then starts again, in front of different magistrates. You are back where you would have been if the letter had arrived, which is the point of it — not an acquittal, a second chance to answer.
The 21 days can be extended where it was not reasonable to expect you to manage it sooner. Treat that as a concession you might need rather than a plan you can rely on.
If the 21 days have gone, that is not the end of it. Under section 142 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 a magistrates’ court can order that a case be heard again by different magistrates where it is in the interests of justice, and no time limit is written into that power. It is a narrower route than the statutory declaration, and it does not fit every case. If you are past the deadline, take advice on it before you do anything else.
Why the Mayor’s 21 days are easier than yours
The clock starts when you find out. He found out in the most favourable way it is possible to find out.
A news agency went through the court records, saw the name, and asked him about it. Within days the prosecutor had said publicly that it was examining the case — and a prosecutor that wants a conviction undone can ask the court to reopen it, which is a considerably shorter road than proving to a court when you learned of something.
Somebody without a press office finds out differently. They find out when an enforcement letter arrives, or when the money starts coming out of their wages, or when an employer runs a check before a job. By then the 21 days have usually gone, and they are left proving the date they found out as well as everything else.
Same section, same 21 days, entirely different odds.
If this has happened to you
- Write down the date you found out, and how. Everything turns on it. Keep whatever told you.
- Get the case number and the court from whatever reached you.
- Check the address the court has for you. It is what went wrong here, and it is the one thing you can put right today.
- Serve the declaration and your plea together. Not one and then the other.
- Keep proof of when you sent both.
- Take advice if you are in any doubt. The routes have different time limits and different consequences, and choosing the wrong one can cost you the right one.
Common questions
What is a statutory declaration?
A formal statement, made on oath, that you did not know about the notice or the proceedings until a date you give. It has to be made in front of someone authorised to take one — a solicitor, or the court itself — and served on the court office named in the notice. Courts have their own form for it.
What if I have missed the 21 days?
The court can still accept a declaration where it was not reasonable to expect you to have served it in time. There is also a separate power, under section 142 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, for a court to order that a case be heard again by different magistrates in the interests of justice, and no time limit is written into it. Both are narrower than serving in time, and which one fits depends on the facts. Take advice.
Does a statutory declaration mean the case is over?
No. Everything after the notice is void, including the conviction and the fine, but the charge itself survives. The case begins again in front of different magistrates, and you answer it there.
Will I have to go to court?
To make the declaration, usually yes or something close to it: it has to be sworn in front of a person authorised to take it, and some courts want that done at the court. What happens afterwards depends on the plea you enter with it.
Does the conviction come off my record?
If the declaration is accepted, the conviction is void and goes with everything else that followed the notice. That is not the same as the allegation going away — you are back at the start of the case, not past it.