Points and Bans

Exceptional hardship: how magistrates actually decide

Written and reviewed by a practising criminal barrister · Law stated as at 27 August 2026

Losing your job is not, by itself, enough

This is the single most useful thing to know, and it is the point at which most self-prepared applications fail.

The guideline states that evidence that loss of employment would follow from a disqualification is not in itself sufficient to demonstrate exceptional hardship. Not irrelevant — insufficient. Magistrates hear it in almost every application, from people who are all telling the truth, and if it were enough on its own the six-month minimum would mean nothing.

So an application built entirely on “I will lose my job” is built on the one fact the court has been told not to treat as decisive.

Hardship to other people

This is the least understood part of the test and, in practice, where cases are won.

The court is entitled to consider consequences falling on others, and those consequences carry weight precisely because those people had no part in the offending. Some patterns that arise repeatedly:

• Employees. A small business where the disqualification means work stops and other people lose their livelihoods, not merely their employer’s convenience.
• Dependants. Children who cannot get to school any other way; a family whose income disappears entirely rather than reduces.
• Care. A relative you drive to treatment, where there is no realistic alternative and the alternative that exists is not equivalent.
• A community role that genuinely cannot be performed by anyone else.

In each of those the hardship is real, specific, falls on someone else, and can be checked. That combination is what distinguishes an argument from an assertion.

What magistrates are sceptical of

It is worth being blunt about this, because knowing it is more useful than encouragement.

• Assertion without evidence. “My employer will dismiss me” carries little weight without something from the employer that says so.
• “I need my car for work.” Almost everyone does. It is the starting point of the enquiry, not the answer to it.
• Inconvenience presented as hardship. A longer, more expensive, more tedious journey is the ordinary consequence of a ban.
• Alternatives that were never explored. If there is a bus, a colleague, a taxi budget or a job that could be reorganised, the court will want to know why none of them works. Being unable to answer that is fatal more often than anything else.
• Overreach. An application that claims too much invites the court to disbelieve the part that was true.

Evidence that moves the needle

Described at the level of pattern rather than as a template, because the right evidence depends entirely on the facts:

• An employer letter that says the actual thing. Not that you are a valued member of staff, but what specifically happens on the day you cannot drive, who decides it, and why redeployment is not possible.
• Figures rather than adjectives. Accounts, payslips, the cost of the alternative, the distance, the timetable that does not work.
• Evidence from the person affected where the hardship falls on someone else. The dependant, the employee, the person cared for.
• Medical or care evidence where the need is a health need.
• Proof you looked. Evidence of what alternatives you investigated and why each does not work is frequently worth more than evidence of the hardship itself.

The procedure, which surprises people

You have to be there. Exceptional hardship is not a form, a letter or a box on a plea document; it is evidence, and evidence is given in person and on oath.

That means: ask to attend court when you respond to the notice, be prepared to be cross-examined by the prosecutor, and bring your documents with copies. A case put well in writing and then not attended does not get run.

If your matter has arrived as a Single Justice Procedure Notice, say at that point that you wish to attend. The court has to offer you the chance before disqualifying, but that offer comes in the post, and post gets missed.

You get one go, for three years

If circumstances are used to reduce or avoid a disqualification, the same circumstances cannot be used again for three years.

The practical consequence is the opposite of what people instinctively do. There is no value in holding something in reserve for next time, because next time it will be unavailable. Put the entire case now.

It also means an application that succeeds narrowly on a thin point has spent that point. If the real strength of your position is the effect on your employees, run that, rather than something easier to prove that will be exhausted when you need it.

Can I do this myself?

You can. There is no rule requiring representation, people do it, and some of them succeed. What it involves is what this page describes: gathering evidence that answers the question the court is actually asking, being at the hearing, giving evidence on oath, and handling cross-examination on it.

What a barrister adds is judgement on your particular facts — which of your circumstances is the argument and which is background, what evidence will be missed, and whether the application is realistically available at all — and then making the argument on the day. On the three-year rule, that judgement is worth more than it looks: the cost of running the wrong argument is not just losing, it is losing the right one for three years.

What about the success rate?

There are no official statistics. The Ministry of Justice does not publish outcomes for exceptional hardship applications, so any firm quoting a percentage is quoting its own record, on its own selection of cases, unaudited. Treat those numbers accordingly. What determines the outcome is the evidence and whose hardship it is.

Common questions

What counts as exceptional hardship?

Hardship going beyond what an ordinary disqualification causes, and usually hardship falling on people other than you. There is no list, because it turns on the facts and on the evidence you can produce.

What is the success rate?

Nobody knows, because no official figures are published. Percentages quoted by firms are their own results on their own cases and cannot be checked.

Do I keep the points if the argument succeeds?

Yes. Avoiding or shortening the ban does not remove the points, and they keep counting for their three years. A further offence can take you back before the court quickly.

Can I argue it in writing instead of attending?

No, other than very exceptionally. It requires evidence from you, given on oath, which means attending the hearing.

Can I use the same reasons again next time?

Not within three years of the occasion they were used to reduce or avoid a disqualification. New circumstances can be relied on.

Does it help that the offence was minor?

No. The court is specifically prevented from taking into account circumstances alleged to make the offence not a serious one. The argument is about the consequences of the ban, not about the driving.