Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi all,
I hope all is well.
I had an urgent query if the community can advise:

My wife is a named driver on her brother's car. Brother is the registered keeper and lives in one part of London. Wife and I live in the outskirts of Essex.

This particular day in question, in September, my wife had gone up to Cambridge and she was caught doing 80 in a 70 dual carriageway.

The first letter came came in brothers name and he was to identify the driver. This was submitted on the 5th February by brother at the earliest opportunity. He identified my wife as the driver on that fateful day.

A new letter came under wife's name, dated 6th February. Wife and I had been away and recently returned.

Wife emailed the CTO office asking why SAC was not offered, they replied with the following:

In order for a driver awareness course to be offered, we have to receive an admission from the driver within 3 ½ months of the date of the offence.

Regrettably your online admission was received on the 5th February 2025 therefore this was 5 months after the date of the offence.

In the circumstances, you will either have to accept the fixed penalty or if you dispute the offence to request a court hearing.


My wife received her notification on the 5th February so it was already over the 3 1/2 months mark, and nowhere did it say about the 3 1/2 months rule, from what I could remember. had we known, the reply would have been given promptly. She replied back stating the same. We await their response.

It's either she accepts the 3 points and £100 fine or go to court.

This is her first time getting caught speeding, and is usually a careful driver, don't know what happened that day.

What would be the best course of action in this case? Between the both of us, this is the first time we've had such a thing happen, so not sure what to do? She relies on her car a lot and is afraid this will ofcourse push her insurance up.

I would be grateful for any advice and help on the matter. We have until 14th March t respond to accepting the fine and points or go to court.

Thank you all.

Is your brother-in-law the Registered Keeper (i.e. does he hold the V5C and are his details correctly recorded on it)?

If he is, and assuming he responded promptly, does he know of any reason why the police took four or five months to contact him?

What date in September was the alleged offence?

Hi All,

I challenged the CTO office and replied to their email above saying how could we have reasonably replied back to the notice if the registered keeper was notified first, who then sent in the actual drivers details. The whole process by the time my wife received the notice was more than 3 1/2 months.

This was their reply:

Thank you for the below email, after reviewing this matter, due to the date of the offence, the decision has been made to discontinue with this offence therefore please accept this email as confirmation that no further action will be taken.

I would however advise that should a similar offence occur, we would not be able to intervene again.

Good result in the end!