About Points and Bans
Points and Bans is a free tool that tells you what you are actually facing after a road traffic offence in England and Wales: the likely fine, the points, whether a disqualification is in play, and what your realistic options are before you respond.
Who writes this
My name is Conall Bailie. I am a barrister practising in England and Wales, called to the Bar in 2016, and road traffic law has been a substantial part of my work for most of the decade since.
I act across the full range of driving offences. At one end that is speeding, using a mobile phone, and the totting-up cases this site is mostly concerned with. At the other it is causing serious injury by dangerous driving and causing death by dangerous driving, where what is at stake is measured in years rather than points.
I am instructed by solicitors and, under the public access scheme, directly by members of the public. Much of my referred work involves cases where a disqualification would be genuinely consequential, for a business, a livelihood or a public reputation, and where the preparation is expected to be thorough.
A site like this can set out what the court is likely to do and what your options are before you respond. What it cannot do is judge which argument will work on your particular facts, or make that argument for you on the day.
Why it exists
Most people who receive a Single Justice Procedure Notice or a postal requisition have never been prosecuted before. They have twenty-one days, a form that offers three options without explaining the consequences of any of them, and no easy way to find out what a court is likely to do. The information exists, but it is scattered across sentencing guidelines, statutes and practitioner texts that assume you already know your way around them.
The choices made in those twenty-one days are often irreversible. Pleading guilty by post and consenting to the case being decided in your absence closes off a defence, a special reasons argument and an exceptional hardship application, and most people do not know that when they tick the box. This site sets out to make the position clear before that point, not after it.
How it works
Answer a short set of questions about your offence. The tool applies the published Sentencing Council magistrates’ court guidelines to your answers and shows you the likely outcome, the routes that might reduce or avoid it, and whether your situation is one where taking advice is worth the money.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is stored, transmitted or seen by anyone.
What it is not
It is information, not legal advice. It produces an estimate from published guidelines, and it does not know the facts of your case, the view the particular bench will take, or anything the prosecution may say. Courts retain a discretion to go outside the ranges, and they use it. Nothing here creates a barrister–client relationship. Where the answer matters enough to be worth paying for, the tool says so rather than pretending otherwise.
How it is kept current
Every page carries a “law stated as at” date. The sentencing engines are unit tested, and the content is versioned and dated in the same way code is, so that a change to a guideline produces a visible update rather than a silent drift. Where a figure is contested between sources, the primary source is followed and the conflict is recorded.