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One of the ways in which the courts punish motoring offences is to endorse the guilty party’s licence with penalty points. These “penalty points” will remain on your licence for a certain length of time, depending upon the committed offence, and can be “totted up” which can lead to loss of licence.

According to direct.gov.uk, penalty points will either stay on your licence for four or eleven years, depending on your conviction. For example, if you have been caught drink driving, or committed a drug driving offence, then your licence will be endorsed for eleven years. If, on the other hand, you have been convicted of reckless or dangerous driving, or motoring offences resulting in disqualification, then your licence will be endorsed for four years.

Points on your licence act as a punishment as they can be “totted up” over time, which means that rather than new offences cancelling out old offences, each new set of penalty points will be added on to any current points. Once you reach twelve penalty points or more within three years, you will be liable for disqualification.

Different crimes will lead to your licence being endorsed with different numbers of points, and, for example, failing to stop after an accident could lead to your licence being endorsed with 5-10 penalty points, whereas a mobile phone offence will lead to three points.

As there is often leniency in the number of points per offence, using an experienced solicitors firm like Cunninghams could really make the difference between losing and keeping your licence.