The Quiet Weeks Between Your NIP and a Summons Are When Cases Are Won — Most Drivers Waste Them

• A NIP must reach the registered keeper within 14 days of the alleged offence — and you then have 28 days to respond to the s.172 request inside it.
• Ignore that request and you commit a separate offence carrying 6 penalty points and a fine of up to £1,000 — double the points of the speeding offence itself.
• But between those deadlines sits a window most Drivers never use, and it’s where cases are actually won.

Two brown envelopes bookend every speeding case.

The first is the Notice of Intended Prosecution, which the law requires to reach the registered keeper within 14 days of the alleged offence. The second, weeks or months later, is a summons or Single Justice Procedure notice telling you the prosecution is going ahead.

Ask most Drivers what they did between the two and the honest answer is: nothing. They sent the form back, crossed their fingers, and waited to see what the system would decide about them.

That waiting feels sensible. It is, in our experience, the single most expensive mistake in motoring law — because the weeks between the NIP and the summons are precisely when a case is most winnable.

First, Don’t Fall Into the 6-Point Trap

Inside the NIP sits a legal demand under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act: identify who was driving. You have 28 days.

Miss that deadline, or answer it badly, and you’ve committed a brand-new offence — failing to provide driver information — carrying 6 penalty points and a fine of up to £1,000. Yes, you read that right: ignoring the paperwork for a 3-point speeding allegation earns you double the points of the speeding itself.

So responding is not optional. But here’s what thousands of Drivers get wrong: naming the driver is not a confession. It answers one administrative question — who was at the wheel — and says nothing about whether an enforceable offence ever took place.

That second question stays wide open. And it’s exactly the question the quiet weeks are for.

The Clock That’s Ticking Against the Prosecution

While you wait, the other side is on a deadline of its own. For a summary offence like speeding, the prosecution must be set in motion within six months — and every procedural step along the way has to be done correctly.

Was the NIP served in time, to the right person, with the right details? Does the photographic evidence — which some forces will supply on request — actually support the allegation? Is the speed reading from a properly operated, properly calibrated device on an enforceable stretch of road?

These questions can be asked, and the answers gathered, while the case is still young: memories fresh, dashcam footage unwiped, signage photographed as it stood that week.

Try asking them for the first time after a summons arrives, with a Court date already fixed, and you’re assembling a defence in a sprint that should have been a stroll.

Don’t miss a story: join the free DriveProtect newsletter — straight-talking updates for British Motorists.

What Our Solicitors Wish Every Driver Knew

DriveProtect™ has been helping Members with speeding cases since 2009, and the message from our legal side has never changed: contact us when the section 172 notice arrives, not when the summons does.

Members who get in touch at the NIP stage hand their Speeding Solicitor the whole board — time to scrutinise the paperwork, request the evidence, spot the procedural cracks, and advise exactly what to respond and when. Members who wait for a summons hand over a case where several of the best moves have already expired unplayed.

Same Driver, same alleged offence, very different odds.

So if a NIP is sitting on your kitchen table right now, treat the silence that follows it as an opportunity rather than a reprieve. Every DriveProtect Member gets direct access to a specialist Speeding Solicitor from the moment that first envelope lands — someone who reviews the case and advises them exactly what to respond, for a fraction of the normal cost of legal help.

Got a NIP or points on your licence right now? See how DriveProtect Membership works — a specialist Speeding Solicitor in your corner from £25/month.