How Long Does a Speeding Ticket Take to Come?

So, you think you’ve been caught by a speed camera. If you have, you should expect to receive your speeding ticket in the post fairly soon.

But how long does a speeding ticket take to come, and what happens if you don’t pay?

How Long Does a Speeding Ticket Take to Come?

You’ll get your speeding ticket within 14 days of being caught by a speed camera. Your speeding ticket will include some paperwork where you’ll have to confirm some details about the incident before they can send your fine.

The police will send you a:

Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP).
Section 172 notice.

You’ll then have 28 days to return the Section 172 notice. This is to tell the police who was driving the car at the time of the speeding incident. If you ignore this notice, you may have to go to court.

After you’ve sent this notice back to the police, they’ll send you a Fixed Penalty Notice. The minimal penalty for speeding is a £100 fine and three penalty points on your licence. But if your speeding offence was particularly bad, you may get a court summons instead of the points and the fine.

What is a Speed Awareness Course?

In some circumstances, you might be able to avoid the fine and the penalty points by agreeing to take a speed awareness course. However, not in all cases. You may still have to pay the fine or pay the cost to partake in the speed awareness course. This is a workshop, usually lasting a day, that’ll help you understand the dangers of speeding. It will also offer you various tips on safer driving to help you avoid future speeding offences.

You can read more about them in our complete guide to speed awareness courses, and how they work.

How to Know If You’ve Been Caught By a Speed Camera

The only way to know for sure if you’ve been caught by a speed camera is if you get the NIP and Section 172 notice in the post. You might suspect that you’ve been caught by a speed camera. But if 14 days pass and you don’t receive any notification by post, then you might be in the clear.

Take this as a warning, though. If you think you might have been caught by a speed camera, then it follows that you might have been speeding. The only way to avoid getting caught by a speed camera is to never speed! So perhaps you can now endeavour to be extra careful with your speed.

Do Speed Cameras Always Flash?

One way to tell if you’ve been caught by a speed camera – you might see a flash behind you. But not all speed cameras flash. Some rely on infra-red technology to take pictures in any light. Plus, average speed cameras don’t record your speed with a single flash second. They instead monitor your speed over a length of road.

Also, seeing a flash behind you doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve been caught by a speed camera. The camera might have caught another driver, for instance. And the flash you saw may not have come from a camera at all. Maybe what you actually saw was another driver flashing their headlights.

So don’t rely on flashes – or a lack of flashes – to determine whether you’ve been caught. If a speed camera has caught you, you’ll receive notification by post. If you don’t receive a notification, then you haven’t been caught. Simple!

Other Speeding Resources

You’ll find many resources on our site to help you understand speed limits and penalties:

One other important thing to understand: If you get points on your licence for speeding, then it will almost certainly affect the price of your car insurance.

Head here to read our complete guide to how speeding can affect car insurance.

Getting car insurance with driving penalties can be frustrating and challenging, especially if they’ve resulted in driving convictions. But it’s still possible to find a policy that suits your needs. Find out more about our convicted and disqualified driver insurance.