Totting Up
The process under s.35 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 by which a driver who accumulates 12 or more penalty points on their licence within three years faces mandatory disqualification for at least six months. The court may refrain from disqualifying only if exceptional hardship is proved.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
Section 35 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 makes disqualification the default consequence of building up too many penalty points. Where the penalty points to be taken into account on that occasion number twelve or more, the court must order the driver to be disqualified for not less than the minimum period, unless it is satisfied, having regard to all the circumstances, that there are grounds for mitigating the normal consequences of the conviction.
The minimum disqualification period is not fixed at six months in every case — it increases where the driver has been disqualified before: the minimum period is six months if no previous disqualification is to be taken into account, one year if one previous disqualification counts, and two years if more than one does, provided that earlier disqualification was for 56 days or more and fell within the three years before the latest offence.
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Official sources
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