Sheeran was prosecuted by the DVLA in a behind closed doors hearing and submitted a letter of explanation to accompany his guilty plea.<\/p>\n
He explained the car “remained within the control of the workshop”, based in Durham, since he handed it over in 2021 and had been kept off public roads “at all times”. <\/p>\n
He also wrote: “There has accordingly been no risk to third party members of the public arising from uninsured driving of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
“I have at no point had physical possession or practical control of the vehicle.<\/p>\n
“In fact, the vehicle has been inoperable since 2021, through the relevant date and to the present day.<\/p>\n
“It is still in the process of being restored and converted into an electric vehicle at the workshop,” Sheeran added. <\/p>\n
He later apologised for taking up court resources but also insisted he never received the DVLA’s initial offer of an out-of-court fine, which he said he would have paid immediately.<\/p>\n
Sheeran called it a “genuine administrative misunderstanding” and said the car was declared off-road with a SORN notice on 1 February this year.<\/p>\n
As Sheeran’s case was dealt with under the Single Justice Procedure system, it could be sent to any magistrates’ court regardless of the location of the offence, based on a national database.<\/p>\n
He was among 1,451 people across England and Wales to be convicted last week of failing to insure their vehicles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sheeran was prosecuted by the DVLA in a behind closed doors hearing and submitted a letter of explanation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-727352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}