08-21-2026, 05:10 PM
Well done for persevering, @samh47. The charge has been cancelled, so go and buy a lottery ticket while your luck is clearly in: an IAS appeal has actually been allowed. In fact, that is the second one this week from appeals I have suggested be submitted!
That said, the adjudicator could not resist inserting this extraordinary piece of invented law:
That statement is simply false. There is no legal presumption that a vehicle's registered keeper was its driver. Keeper status is not evidence of driver identity, and the keeper is not required to produce "credible evidence to the contrary" to rebut a presumption that does not exist.
The burden rests upon UKCPS, as the party alleging that the appellant was driving, to prove that fact on the balance of probabilities. It does not shift to the keeper merely because UKCPS has no evidence and chose not to comply with PoFA. Silence cannot fill that evidential void.
The adjudicator's own findings expose the nonsense:
Precisely. UKCPS produced no evidence that the Keeper was driving, so it failed to prove its case. You, the appellant, did not have to prove that somebody else was driving.
If the supposed legal presumption genuinely existed, Schedule 4 of PoFA would be redundant: operators could simply ignore its carefully prescribed conditions, declare the keeper to be the presumed driver and require the keeper to disprove it. Parliament plainly did not create a detailed statutory mechanism for keeper liability merely to provide operators with an optional alternative to a pre-existing presumption achieving the same result.
The appeal was therefore allowed for the correct fundamental reason, but only after the adjudicator repeated a mendacious and legally indefensible fiction about Keeper liability. The conclusion is right; that purported statement of law is utter rubbish.
That said, the adjudicator could not resist inserting this extraordinary piece of invented law:
Quote:"The operator is entitled to rely either on the legal presumption that the keeper of the vehicle was also the driver (which they are entitled to do in the absence of credible evidence to the contrary)…"
That statement is simply false. There is no legal presumption that a vehicle's registered keeper was its driver. Keeper status is not evidence of driver identity, and the keeper is not required to produce "credible evidence to the contrary" to rebut a presumption that does not exist.
The burden rests upon UKCPS, as the party alleging that the appellant was driving, to prove that fact on the balance of probabilities. It does not shift to the keeper merely because UKCPS has no evidence and chose not to comply with PoFA. Silence cannot fill that evidential void.
The adjudicator's own findings expose the nonsense:
Quote:"There is no evidence presented by either party of the Appellant being the driver."
Precisely. UKCPS produced no evidence that the Keeper was driving, so it failed to prove its case. You, the appellant, did not have to prove that somebody else was driving.
If the supposed legal presumption genuinely existed, Schedule 4 of PoFA would be redundant: operators could simply ignore its carefully prescribed conditions, declare the keeper to be the presumed driver and require the keeper to disprove it. Parliament plainly did not create a detailed statutory mechanism for keeper liability merely to provide operators with an optional alternative to a pre-existing presumption achieving the same result.
The appeal was therefore allowed for the correct fundamental reason, but only after the adjudicator repeated a mendacious and legally indefensible fiction about Keeper liability. The conclusion is right; that purported statement of law is utter rubbish.
Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
