Totting Up Penalty Point Bans
A totting ban is when you are disqualified
from driving under Section 35 of the Road
Traffic Offenders Act 1988. In essence this
section states that if a person accumulates
12 points on their licence and all the offences
occur in three years of each other (the
date on which you are convicted or sentenced
is irrelevant) you are liable for disqualification
for a minimum period of 6 months.
If you have had a previous totting ban
within the 3 years proceeding the latest
offence, then the minimum period is 12 months.
If you have had 2 totting bans within the
proceeding 3 years, then the minimum ban
is 2 years.
The only way to avoid a totting ban is
to either defend the allegation against
you, argue Special Reasons and try to persuade
the Court not to impose penalty points and/or
make an Exceptional Hardship argument.
There is no set definition over what amounts
to Exceptional Hardship. The only thing
that the statute says is that the Magistrates
can find that in the circumstances, it would
cause exceptional hardship if they were
to impose the ban and mitigate the normal
sentence, i.e. the 6 month ban. If the Magistrates
find Exceptional Hardship, then they can
agree not to disqualify you at all or impose
a reduced period of disqualification.
If you have made an Exceptional Hardship
argument previously within the preceding
3 years, then you cannot use the same grounds
again in relation to the current proceedings.
When you make an Exceptional Hardship argument,
you have to give evidence on oath and support
your argument with documentary evidence.
The Court Clerk will record the grounds
that you put forward and these will be entered
on the Court Register. This is to stop you
making an argument based on the same grounds
within the following 3 years.
There is no set definition of what amounts
to Exceptional Hardship but the Magistrates
will normally consider the impact that any
such disqualification will have on those
who rely upon you. Therefore it will be
that you deserve to be punished because
you have accumulated 12 points within a
3 year period and that punishment inevitably
involves hardship. However, they will be
more willing to consider the impact that
any such disqualification would have on
those who rely upon you in light of the
fact that those people have not committed
any offences themselves.
