No appeal will go ahead. Send no money. Technical legal reasons (coupled with limited funding) mean that the intention to appeal has been abandoned.

Short Statement by Idris Francis:

I have now been advised by my barrister and solicitor that there is no 
better than a 1 in 4 chance of winning my "unsigned form" case in the 
Lords, even if it got that far - and a significant chance that it would not

Further, the costs could easily escalate into many tens of thousands of 
pounds - a risk I cannot take. Accordingly there will be no appeal.

Many thanks to those who have offered to help fund it.

My application to the ECHR over the right to silence continues

Idris Francis

Following a recent High Court Case where motorist's hero, Idris Francis lost an appeal regarding the issue of signing a "S172" form, we have agreed to manage a fund in the hope of appealing the matter to the House of Lords.

You can read about the recent High Court case (here).

We are still waiting for the full written judgment to be published, but rest assured we will publish it for all to see as soon as possible.

We have Idris Francis' exclusive authority to operate this appeal for funds. Contact: (email) 

It has not yet been decided if an appeal will go ahead. There are two particular constraints that make the decision impossible for now. As follows:

• Idris Francis is already some £8,000 pounds out of pocket over this matter and will not finance further legal action. Quite right too. This appeal would therefore need to raise sufficient funds to cover the cost of appeal, presently estimated at £12,000.

• No rational decision is possible without first examining the full text of the judgment. We are expecting the judgment to be available on or around 30th March 2004.

If we wait to launch the appeal for funds until a decision has been reached based on the judgment, it may be too late to raise the required funding.

For:

• There's a chance of bringing down speed camera law 
• In the House of Lords we get the chance to air wider "public interest" arguments 

• The chances of winning appear fairly slim 
• We might be able to do more good with the same cash spent elsewhere 
• Even if we did win, they would probably go on and repair the law relatively quickly 
• This isn't a major battle in the war for real road safety - it's just a side show

Since we cannot know that an appeal to the House of Lords will go ahead, the following rules apply:
 

1) Donations are not be returnable if the appeal does not go ahead.

• We have looked at the options, and the admin overhead and costs of processing make returning unused funds unreasonable, especially with a large number of small donations. 

2) First call on the net funds* is the Idris Francis appeal to the House of Lords.

• The primary purpose of the fund is to enable the appeal. If the fund is sufficient and the appeal goes ahead, the fund will pay for the appeal.

• * [net funds] means the funds remaining after third party processing charges. (e.g. PayPal and Credit Card commission charges)

3) Left over or unused funds will go into Safe Speed's general fund.

• We promise to use left over or unused funds in the interests of genuine road safety.

Safe Speed encourages comments, further information and participation from our visitors. See our (forums).

Read about our comments policy (here).