What if I face charges for multiple offences? Will I receive points for each offence?

If you’re charged with multiple offences you may not necessarily receive separate sentences?

Often clients contact us having been charged with a number of different offences. For example, failure to stop following an accident, failure to report an accident and careless driving. Or perhaps, drink driving, drug driving and driving without insurance.

Amongst various concerns, one of their worries is how the penalty system works and whether they will receive multiple sets of penalty points or bans from driving. If convicted of offences that come from the same set of circumstance, the court will apply the ‘totality’ principle.

The ‘totality’ principle applies to sentencing so will only take effect if you are entering a guilty plea or you have been convicted. It is made up of two elements:

1. When sentencing for more than a single offence, courts should pass a total sentence which reflects all the offending behaviour and is ‘just and proportionate’.
2. A court cannot decide a ‘just and proportionate’ sentence for multiple offences simply by adding together single sentences. Courts will need to address the offending behaviour, together with the factors personal to the offender as a whole.

The above guidance is provided by the Sentencing Council for cases that involve prison sentences or community orders. However, it also affects cases where a court is considering cases where a driving disqualification will be or could be imposed on sentencing.

Driving disqualifications are either obligatory, or discretionary. Obligatory disqualifications apply to offences such as drink or drug driving (section 34(2) Road Traffic Offenders’ Act 1988). Sentencing for an offence which involves obligatory disqualification means that the court must impose the disqualification on sentencing; unless the defendant advances a successful special reasons argument.

Discretionary disqualifications apply in cases of careless driving, speeding, no insurance, etc. This means that the court can decide whether or not to give the disqualification, section 34(2) Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.

Where a defendant is convicted of two or more offences which attract obligatory disqualification, for example drink or drug driving,  the court must impose an order of disqualification for each offence. The court should take into account all offences when deciding on how long the disqualification periods will be.  However, all disqualifications imposed on the same date will take effect immediately and will run concurrently (at the same time), it is not possible for them to run consecutively (one after the other).

Where a defendant ‘tots up’, only one disqualification shall be imposed. However, the court must take into account all offences when determining the disqualification period. The minimum period of disqualification is 6 months but this can be extended if the defendant has previous disqualifications of longer than 56 days in the past 3 years.

In cases involving two or more offences involving discretionary disqualification for example, speeding or careless driving, if the court decides to impose a disqualification the Sentencing Council’s guidance is that a single disqualification should be imposed which reflects the overall criminality.

There is no specific guidance about how to deal with cases involving a number of offences that happened simultaneously and will incur penalty points, for example, a case of fail to stop, fail to report an accident and careless driving. However, the same principle should apply. In these types of cases usually one set of points will be endorsed on a driver’s licence and a fine imposed for the most serious offence (in this scenario fail to stop/report) which takes in to consideration all the circumstances of the offending; whilst the court record will show ‘no separate penalty’ for the other offences. However, it should be noted that the court cannot impose penalty points fewer than the minimum amount for the most serious offence.

In this example the penalty points range for this combination of offence is:

The most serious offences are Fail to stop and report because the maximum penalty points applicable would be 10 points. Therefore, the lowest penalty someone facing this combination of charges could receive would be 5 points which is the minimum amount for this offence.

In reality, when facing this combination of offences, the penalty imposed will likely be towards the higher end of the range to address the offending behaviour.

Be warned that if facing prosecution for the offences of speeding AND failing to furnish information, if guilty of both charges (and we advise you speak to us before accepting this) then you would be unlikely to argue that the principle of totality applies. This is because these offences arise out of separate circumstances and on different dates that will be at least 30 days apart. Therefore, if convicted of these two offences you could end up with multiple penalty points.

If you are facing multiple offences and are concerned about the impending sentence, then give our specialist motoring team a call on 0161 274 5580.