Still on the Road, the Motorist With 30 Penalty Points

Daily Mail, Thursday, November 10th 2005, James Tozer

A builder escaped a driving ban despite having an incredible 30 penalty points on his licence. Magistrates, who normally disqualify drivers who reach 12 points, decided to spare Stuart Waters after being told a ban would cost him his job.

This was despite police having stopped him five times for driving without a licence.

Yesterday, officers said they were considering an appeal while road safety campaigners voiced outrage at the court's decision.

Caroline Chisholm, of the pressure group Brake, said: “To continue driving when he's been repeatedly told he shouldn't be on the roads shows a complete contempt for the law, and it seems inexplicable that the magistrates did not use their powers to ban him.”

In 2000, Waters, of Northop, near Mold, North Wales, was given penalty points for speeding but he failed to return his licence to the DVLA to be endorsed and it was revoked.

The father of two continued to use his car, however, and five times police stopped him, checked his licence, and established he was driving illegally.

Delays in bringing these offences to court – combined with further speeding offences committed in the meantime – meant that by the time Flintshire magistrates dealt with the case, he had 30 points on his licence.

Waters's solicitor, Phillip Lloyd Jones, asked the bench not to disqualify him because he would lose his job and be unable to support his partner and young children.

Magistrates instead fined him £480 with £210 costs, telling him he would ‘have to be very careful in future.'

No-one at the DVLA was available for comment on the case. But senior police officers are known to be furious and want an investigation into why the repeated breaches did not come to court sooner.

A police spokesman said: “We are consulting with the Crown Prosecution Service about the feasibility of appealing against this decision.”

Waters, meanwhile, continued to plead ignorance over the saga. “I was never told my licence had been revoked and I don't know how I came to have 30 points – I've only been stopped a couple of times,” he said.