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Production of driving licences and endorsement of penalty points

Under the Road Traffic Act when a holder of a driving licence is convicted of an offence in the United Kingdom involving obligatory or discretionary disqualification or endorsement and the court proposes to make such an order then the court must require the licence and its paper counterpart to be produced. A failure to supply the counterpart of the licence can be an offence in its own right, although generally a prosecution will not follow if the holder informs that the counterpart has been lost. In addition, failure to supply the counterpart can lead to the suspension of the driving licence.

It is not uncommon to represent people for motoring offences only to discover that in fact their driving licence has been suspended as they failed to produce the counterpart in relation to an earlier endorsement. There are a large number of drivers driving at any one time who have had their licence suspended, most of them are completely unaware of the fact.

The offence of failing to provide the driving licence to the court when required to do so is punishable with a fine up to £1000.00. Driving whilst subject to a suspended licence is also an offence.

Penalty points

It is often the case that drivers are convicted at the same time of multiple offences. For example, at any one time a driver may be convicted of driving with no MOT, no licence and no insurance and the court then has to decide how many penalty points to endorse on the licence because all the offences are endorseable. The general rule is that the court has a discretion as far as this is concerned, but the court will not endorse a driving licence with the penalty points from all of the offences, it will simply endorse the licence with the offence which is punishable with the highest number of points. So, in the above example the offence of driving without insurance carries between six and eight penalty points and it is likely, depending on the circumstances, that the driver would have their licence endorsed with eight penalty points and no further points would be added for driving without the MOT and not in accordance with the licence. The court can impose points for more than one offence at the same time, but if it decides to do so then it must state its reasons in open court.

If offences are committed with the same car on separate occasions then separate penalty points will be endorsed. So, for example, if a car is driven on two separate days without insurance and this comes to the attention of the Police and the Court then the driver will have his licence endorsed in respect of both of the days as this was not one act of driving. Another example of when the court decides to impose points for both offences is where there was a series of bad driving, for example if the driving involved an element of speeding and then overtaking which involved crossing double white lines. In this scenario the court would be quite justified in imposing separate points for each offence, provided the offences were committed at separate points and not on the same stretch of road.

Offences which are committed on separate occasions have the number or highest number of penalty points awarded separately. If those offences were then committed within three years of each other the points are added together and if they exceed 12 then the driver in question is at risk of a disqualification under the penalty points system.