Cengolio · Fines · Penalty points
Points run on two clocks.
One counts towards a ban and stops after three years. The other keeps the offence on your record for four, where insurers can still see it. Enter your endorsements by the date of the offence, not the date of the letter.
The two clocks
counts towards a ban on the record only, where insurers look
Rules unchanged since the Act; endorsement periods per GOV.UK, checked 17 July 2026.
This counts points against the published rules; it does not predict a sentence. The three-year window runs from one offence date to another, § 29 (2) RTOA 1988, so points do not simply expire three years after today. At twelve the court must disqualify, and the minimum is six months, a year where one ban of 56 days or more falls in the three years before the latest offence, two years where more than one does, § 35 (2) RTOA 1988. Exceptional hardship can shorten or remove it, and that is argument, not arithmetic.
The second clock belongs to the DVLA. Ordinary endorsements sit on the record for four years from the date of the offence; drink and drug codes, DR10 among them, run eleven years from conviction, and dangerous driving four years from conviction. This calculator counts the ordinary kind. Insurers usually ask about five years, which is neither clock.