Court guidelines for common driving offences

Eight common offences sit on this site, each tied to a current Sentencing Council guideline for adult magistrates' courts in England and Wales, checked on 10 September 2026. Two of them, drink driving and drug driving, have no published fixed penalty. They go to court. The other six can start as a fixed penalty: £200 and 6 points for a hand-held phone, £300 and 6 points for no insurance, £100 and 3 points for careless driving, £100 with no points for a seat belt, £100 with no points for no MOT, and £200 and 3 points for a defective tyre.

A fixed penalty is an offer, not a conviction until you accept it. You can refuse and have the case heard. A court is not limited to the fixed amount. It uses the offence guideline, your relevant weekly income, aggravating and mitigating factors, and a guilty plea reduction where you plead guilty. The calculators on the offence pages report that guideline. They do not predict the sentence.

Police can still send a case to court even where a fixed penalty exists: a high reading, an injury, a commercial vehicle, a repeat offence, or a dispute about the facts. The out of court table is the Sentencing Council's current list of published fixed penalties, not a promise that every case of that type stays out of court.

The Sentencing Council publishes six fine bands, A to F. Each band is a percentage of relevant weekly income. Band A starts at 50 per cent and runs from 25 to 75 per cent. Band B starts at 100 per cent. Band C starts at 150 per cent. Band D starts at 250 per cent. Bands E and F are for the most serious fine-only cases. A driver on £500 a week net therefore faces a Band B starting point of £500, a Band C starting point of £750 and a Band D starting point of £1,250. Those pounds are derived from the published percentages. They are not a separate official tariff.

Relevant weekly income is the court's figure, not your headline salary. The fine band guideline explains how the court arrives at it. A company defendant is treated differently from an individual, which is why the no MOT and defective tyre guidelines have a separate owner company row. A 25 per cent uplift on an owner-driver is also published in those two guidelines, and the calculators apply it.

A guilty plea can reduce the substantive sentence under the separate reduction in sentence for a guilty plea guideline. Aggravating factors push up within the range. Mitigating factors push down. The court decides. Nothing on this site is a prediction of what a named bench will do on a named day.

The current total is every point still counting towards 12, measured over 3 years from each offence date. That is the statutory test in section 29 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. Reaching 12 points in that window means the court must disqualify for at least 6 months unless it is satisfied there are grounds to mitigate. Section 35 limits what counts as mitigation: the court cannot treat hardship as enough unless it is exceptional hardship, and it cannot reuse circumstances already used to avoid or shorten a totting ban in the previous 3 years.

A driver inside 2 years of their first test pass is revoked at 6 points, not 12. The licence is cancelled. The only published route back is a new provisional licence and both parts of the test again. Points still live on a provisional licence count towards that 6. Passing a test in another category does not restart the 2 years.

Seat belt and no MOT offences are non-endorsable in the guidelines on this site, so they do not add points and cannot tot you up on their own. A phone, insurance, careless driving or defective tyre endorsement can. Drink and drug driving ordinarily lead to an obligatory disqualification rather than points, but the codes still sit on the record for 11 years from conviction.

Ignoring a fixed penalty offer does not make it vanish. If you neither pay nor request a hearing, the amount can be registered as a fine and enforcement can follow. Ignoring a court summons can lead to a hearing in your absence, a larger sentence, a warrant, or both. Drink and drug driving cases in particular do not wait for you to feel ready.

A driving ban starts when the court says it starts. Driving during a ban is a separate offence. If DVLA revokes a new driver's licence, you cannot treat the old photocard as valid while you argue about it. Send the licence when DVLA asks. GOV.UK sets a maximum £1,000 fine for failing to send it when requested.

Insurance is a practical problem as well as a legal one. A conviction for a serious driving offence is likely to raise premiums considerably, which is the Highway Code's published wording, not a percentage this site can invent. An employer who requires a clean licence will see the endorsement on a check. None of that is delayed by not opening the envelope.

No. Every calculator on these pages is an adult magistrates' court guideline for England and Wales. The Sentencing Council does not set sentences in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. Scottish courts and Northern Ireland courts use their own processes. The offence itself still exists across the United Kingdom, and DVLA endorsement codes are the same codes on a Great Britain licence, but the starting fine, the band and the published range on these pages are not a Scottish or Northern Ireland tariff.

Drink driving is the clearest split on the limit itself. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the prescribed alcohol limit in section 11 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is 35 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, 80 milligrammes in 100 millilitres of blood, or 107 milligrammes in 100 millilitres of urine. Scotland sets a lower prescribed limit in the 2014 regulations: 22 microgrammes in 100 millilitres of breath, 50 milligrammes in 100 millilitres of blood, or 67 milligrammes in 100 millilitres of urine. A reading that is legal in Carlisle can be over the limit in Gretna.

Northern Ireland licensing is run by DVA, not DVLA. A disqualification on a Great Britain licence still stops you driving in Northern Ireland. The process for getting a licence back, including high risk offender medicals, is different there. GOV.UK says so on the disqualification pages and does not publish a Northern Ireland sentence table here, so this site does not invent one.

Answer the insurer's questions about unspent convictions. Do not guess a percentage increase. No official source publishes a code-by-code premium change, so this site shows none. The Highway Code warns that a serious driving conviction is likely to push premiums up considerably. A drink or drug driving conviction is in that category. A seat belt fixed penalty is not an endorsement and is a different conversation with an insurer, but a lie on a proposal is still a lie.

If you drive for work, the employer can see the licence record. A clean licence is a stated requirement for certain jobs. A ban ends that driving. A new driver revocation ends it until you pass both tests again. A hire company and a lease company will also check. Driving a hire car without the cover the contract requires can become a no insurance case, which has its own guideline and a ${gbp((insurance.fixedPenalty.value ?? 0) / 100)} fixed penalty.

Foreign vehicles and visitors are not outside the criminal law. The offence is committed on the road in this country. Enforcement against a visiting driver can involve the vehicle as well as the driver. This site does not publish a separate visitor tariff because the Sentencing Council guidelines on these pages are not written as one.

The most common mistake is treating the calculator as a quote. It is a guideline lookup. The second is mixing up the clocks: points count for totting for 3 years from the offence, stay on the record for 4 years from the offence for most codes, and drink or drug codes stay for 11 years from conviction. The third is assuming a fixed penalty is the maximum. It is the out of court offer. A court can go higher, and for some offences the maximum is unlimited.

People also mix England and Wales figures with Scotland. The lower Scottish drink limit is a real legal difference. The fine bands on these pages are not. Another myth is that a company car, a hire car or 'I was only moving it' creates a defence to no insurance, no MOT or a phone in the hand. The guidelines deal with the driver, and in some cases the owner, on the facts of use.

A new driver with 3 points who then takes 3 more is at the revocation threshold, not halfway to a totting ban. That ${newPts} point rule is a different statute from the ${tot} point rule. Treating them as the same clock is how people are surprised by a cancelled licence.