Speed Awareness Courses

Media coverage over the Home Secretary’s attempts to avoid a group Speed Awareness Course in May 2023 has recently brought these courses into the spotlight. In 2021, 1.39 million drivers attended a speed awareness course in the UK. Since 2014 there have been over 1 million speed awareness course attendances per year.

If you are offered a Speed Awareness Course you will have no penalty points recorded against you once it is successfully completed.  

However, it is entirely up to the police whether you will be offered a place on a course.  Policies vary between police forces as to when courses will be offered. Some police forces will not offer speed awareness courses to anyone convicted of driving at an excessive speed. 

If you are eligible to attend a Speed Awareness Course, then you will be notified by the police.

If you are not offered a course, then the only way to avoid penalty points will be to plead not guilty to the charge, by, for example, casting doubt on the allegation you were speeding.

Unfortunately, there is no formal procedure for a driver to ask the police force dealing with the offence for a Speed Awareness Course. Nor can a court on conviction order the police to offer you a place on the course.

Generally speaking, the following criteria must apply before a Speed Awareness Course will be offered:-

• You have admitted to being the driver of the vehicle at the time of the offence and did so within the required 28-day period

• You have not attended on speed awareness course within the 3 years prior offence date

• There have been no speeding offences committed since the time of the offence

• You were driving at a speed which qualifies as per the table below.

A quick google search should reveal if there is a speed awareness course on your area or visit the gov.uk website.