Magistrates' Guidelines for Speeding Offences

The Sentencing Guidelines Council has set down detailed sentencing guidelines for speeding charges. A more comprehensive list of the penalties for motoring offences, and a description of the "totting up" procedure, is shown on the Penalty Points page.

You should note that these are only guidelines and the magistrates can and will deviate from them depending on the circumstances of a particular offence.

You can use our handy calculator to see what the guidelines indicate for any particular speed:

As far as fines are concerned speeding carries a maximum fine of £1,000 (£2,500 if speeding on a motorway). The fines laid down in the guidelines are specified in terms of your relevant weekly income (referred to as "RWI" below), subject to the maximum levels stated above. RWI is essentially your weekly income after income tax and National Insurance.

• For the purpose of setting the fine, your RWI is assumed to be at least £100 per week, even if it's actually less than that.
• If the court has no information about your income then they will assume that your RWI is £350.
• For a first time offender the court will not normally impose a fine exceeding 75% of the maximum available, regardless of your RWI.

Points and disqualification are alternative penalties; you won't get both. However you will still be fined.

The guideline penalties for speeding are:

All speeding offences are handled by Magistrates' Courts; if you'd like to know more about these courts please follow this link.

You can read the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Speed Enforcement Guidelines.

Here are some interesting figures for the revenue generated from speeding offences for each Welsh county. Take a look at the figures and ratios for the smallest county, Gwent!

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