Sadiq Khan's Nissan Micra conviction exposes the flaws in the Single Justice Procedure
The story would be comic if it did not involve a criminal conviction. As the BBC has reported, Sir Sadiq Khan was convicted in August 2026 of keeping an untaxed 24-year-old Nissan Micra. City Hall says that neither Khan nor Transport for London owned the car and that it had been falsely registered in his name. The DVLA correspondence and court papers were sent to 9 Endeavour Square in Stratford, a building occupied by a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, rather than TfL's offices at 5 Endeavour Square or Sir Sadiq’s home.
With no plea or response before the court, a single magistrate in Herefordshire convicted Khan and ordered him to pay a £220 fine, £85 costs and £35.84 in back duty. Even the notice of conviction went to the restaurant. After the case became public, the DVLA reviewed it and announced that the prosecution would be withdrawn. Because a conviction had already been entered, the proceedings still had to be formally reopened before that could happen.
It is tempting to dismiss this as an unusual administrative mishap. It is more revealing than that. The papers may have appeared internally consistent: Khan's details were recorded against the vehicle and no answer had arrived. A magistrate in Hereford could not be expected to know TfL's address. That is precisely the problem. With no defendant, prosecutor or testing of the evidence, inaccurate data and an incorrect address travelled all the way to conviction.
What is the Single Justice Procedure?
The Single Justice Procedure (SJP) was introduced in 2015 and is governed principally by section 16A of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980. It allows one magistrate, assisted by a legal adviser, to decide eligible cases on written material without the prosecutor or defendant attending. The procedure is restricted to adults and companies accused of summary-only offences that do not carry prison sentences. Common examples include speeding, vehicle licensing offences and television licence evasion.
A defendant has 21 days to respond. A person who pleads guilty can accept a decision on the papers or ask to attend court. A not guilty plea, or a request not to be tried under the SJP, takes the case out of the paper procedure and into an ordinary magistrates' court hearing. If there is no response, however, the allegation can be proved and sentence imposed in the defendant's absence.
There is a sensible idea at the heart of the scheme. Someone who accepts a minor offence should not have to lose a day attending court merely to receive a predictable fine. The objection is not to a paper procedure. It is to processing an unanswered allegation as though it were genuinely uncontested.
Silence is the rule, not the exception
Ministry of Justice figures show that 197,321 SJP cases were disposed of in the first quarter of 2025. They represented 56% of all cases disposed of in the magistrates' courts. Yet only 24% of the defendants recorded in that dataset entered a guilty plea. Two per cent pleaded not guilty and sought a hearing. The remaining 74% entered no plea at all.
That figure should change how the procedure is understood. Non-engagement is not an occasional complication; it is its dominant feature. A notice may have been ignored, but it may also have gone to an old or incorrect address. The recipient may be in hospital, in a care home, struggling with literacy or mental capacity, or unable to distinguish a criminal charge from routine official correspondence. They could also be away on business – a friend of mine is currently on a seven-week trip that includes six-weeks on business in south-east Asia and a week’s holiday in Australia. Khan's case provides an unusually clear example of the danger: a notice sent to the wrong building produced not a warning flag, but a conviction.
These offences are labelled minor because imprisonment is unavailable, not because the outcome is unimportant. In 2024 almost every SJP disposal was a fine, averaging £284. Motoring cases can also bring penalty points or disqualification, affecting employment and family responsibilities.
When efficiency becomes conveyor-belt justice
The magistrate must examine the evidence, decide whether the offence is proved to the criminal standard, consider the defendant's representations and impose an individual sentence. Yet the scale and culture of SJP work create pressure in the opposite direction.
The Standard newspaper reported in 2024 that some courts had communicated expectations of at least 100 SJP cases a day. HM Courts and Tribunals Service said such targets should not exist. That sits uneasily with reports of cases completed in well under two minutes and a February 2026 sitting at which one magistrate convicted and sentenced 136 defendants.
Concern also comes from within the magistracy. The Magistrates' Association found that many members were uncomfortable with the system and that a significant proportion did not always feel they had enough time. Its recommendations included better training, protection from pressure to process cases quickly, routine prosecutorial review of defendants' representations and greater transparency. Judicial discretion is a safeguard only if the decision-maker has the time, information and confidence to use it.
The missing public-interest check
The weakness is compounded by a gap between prosecution and sentencing. High-volume prosecutors such as the DVLA may begin a case without knowing anything about a defendant's personal circumstances. If the defendant later sends mitigation to the court, the prosecutor does not routinely see it before the single justice makes a decision. The person who could withdraw the charge may therefore never see the information showing why it should be withdrawn.
A magistrate cannot discontinue a prosecution simply because it appears not to be in the public interest. The magistrate can adjourn and invite the prosecutor to review the case, or reflect the circumstances in sentence. Too often the latter course has produced an absolute or conditional discharge while leaving the conviction itself in place.
Investigative reporting has exposed a woman with Down's syndrome convicted of television licence evasion although her local authority managed her finances, and others with dementia, serious mental illness or acute physical illness. Some convictions were revisited only after journalists contacted the prosecutor. Justice should not depend upon press attention after sentence.
The failures are systemic, not anecdotal
The clearest evidence is the railway prosecutions scandal. Train operators used the SJP for offences under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 that were not eligible for the procedure, including imprisonable offences. The mistake continued for years without being stopped by prosecutors, court administration, legal advisers or magistrates. The Chief Magistrate ultimately declared the affected proceedings invalid. Official statistics put the number at approximately 60,000 cases, with HMCTS required to trace defendants and arrange reimbursement. Children have also been wrongly convicted even though the procedure was then restricted to adults.
These were not disagreements about sympathy or the level of a fine. They were failures to apply basic legal rules governing whether the SJP could be used at all. A process capable of repeating an elementary error tens of thousands of times is efficient only in the narrowest sense: it can reproduce a mistake very quickly.
What meaningful reform would look like
The SJP can be retained for defendants who positively plead guilty, understand the allegation and choose a paper disposal. A failure to respond should not be treated as equivalent to a guilty plea. No-response cases need enhanced identity and service checks. Disputed identity, third-party replies, impaired capacity and obvious vulnerability should take a case out of the fast-track route.
Prosecutors should see every response and mitigation statement before the case reaches a magistrate, and confirm that the evidential and public-interest tests have been reviewed. Numerical targets must be prohibited in practice as well as policy. No-plea convictions should attract recorded reasons and meaningful audit. Open justice requires enough information to understand how a decision was reached, not merely that it happened.
The Government consulted on SJP safeguards in spring 2025, including mandatory review of mitigation and better pre-prosecution engagement. In June 2026 it said its response would be published in due course. Khan's case is another reminder that delay leaves the same structural risks in place.
What should you do if you receive a Single Justice Procedure Notice?
Do not ignore a Single Justice Procedure Notice. Check the allegation, date, identifying details and evidence, and respond within 21 days. If you dispute the allegation, plead not guilty and the case will be listed for a hearing. If you accept the offence but have important mitigation, explain it clearly and provide supporting documents. Do not describe a defence as though it were merely mitigation.
If you discover that you were convicted without knowing about the notice or proceedings, section 16E of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 provides for a statutory declaration. It should be served within 21 days of discovering the case and must be accompanied by a response to the original notice. Other routes to ask the magistrates' court to reopen a case may apply where the court lacked relevant information or made an error. Acting quickly matters, particularly where penalty points or disqualification are involved.
A warning the system should not ignore
Sadiq Khan has the profile and institutional support to correct an erroneous conviction rapidly. Most people do not. His case matters because it shows how an incorrect database entry, a wrong address and an unanswered notice can be converted into a criminal judgment with almost no friction. The SJP should make proportionate justice easier; it must not make scrutiny optional.
If you have received a Single Justice Procedure Notice, or learned that you were convicted without knowing about the case, Chetwode Criminal Defence Solicitors can assess the allegation, advise on the correct plea and help you take the appropriate steps to protect your position.