Totting Up / Exceptional Hardship S35 Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988
If you obtain 12 penalty points or more on your licence within a 3 year period the court must disqualify you from driving for a minimum period of 6 months unless it is proven that as a result you or someone who relies upon you will suffer "exceptional hardship." The Court may decide not to disqualify where exceptional hardship applies. This discretion only applies to totting up and does not apply to offences which carry a mandatory disqualification, such as driving with excess alcohol.
Exceptional hardship is not merely hardship in being disqualified (which everyone suffers in having to use public transport whether or not it is available) but something "exceptional" - something out of the ordinary. Simply losing your job is not always enough. To have a good chance of succeeding, it will be necessary for you to prove hardship which would have wider reaching consequences to you and/or other people in the event that you were to be disqualified.
If the Court finds that exceptional hardship does apply to your case it can either disqualify you for a shorter period than the normal six months or waive the ban altogether. The advantage of being disqualified is that a ban of any period under totting up wipes the slate clean so that at the end of the disqualification your licence will be free of penalty points.
There is no definition as to what amounts to exceptional hardship and the law states that the court cannot take into account hardship that does not amount to Exceptional Hardship. Confused?
Just because someone else kept their licence for a specific reason does not guarantee that you will. In recent times it has been our experience that the courts are becoming tougher when deciding what amounts to exceptional hardship. This is why it is so important your case is meticulously prepared and presented by an expert lawyer.
When considering an exceptional hardship argument the Court cannot take into consideration any mitigating circumstances which relate to the offences themselves. In other words it is considering the effect of the disqualification only and not how you reached 12 penalty points.
You may not use the same circumstances which have been used previously to substantiate a previous exceptional hardship argument in the three years prior to the date your case is heard.
