Speed Awareness Course: Cost, Length and Whether It Keeps Points Off Your Licence

A UK speed awareness course costs roughly £80 to £100, runs for about three hours, and – this is the part that matters – keeps the 3 penalty points off your licence. You still pay for the course instead of the £100 fixed penalty, but you walk away with a clean licence and no endorsement code, which is exactly what protects your insurance premium.

If a letter has just landed offering you one, that is genuinely good news. Below is what it costs, how long it takes, who qualifies, and why it is almost always the smarter choice for a newer driver. I teach people this stuff from the passenger seat every week, so I will keep it plain and skip the scare tactics.

How much does a speed awareness course cost?

Expect to pay somewhere between £80 and £100. The exact fee is set by the course provider and your local police force area, not by a single national price. gov.uk states plainly that the prices shown on the booking system are “a guideline – the course provider sets the final price,” so the figure on your letter is the one to trust.

To give you real numbers rather than a vague range, here is what different forces were charging for the National Speed Awareness Course (NSAC) at the time of writing:

Area / provider	Course fee
Kent	£98
Hampshire (Hants Courses)	£96
Greater Manchester (TfGM DriveSafe)	£96
Staffordshire	£93
Typical national range	£80-£100

Compare that with the alternative. The standard speeding penalty from gov.uk is a £100 fixed penalty fine plus 3 penalty points. So the course costs about the same as the fine you would have paid anyway – the difference is that the fine also lands you with points, and the course does not. You are paying a similar amount to avoid the far more expensive consequence, which is the points and everything they drag along with them.

Do you still pay the fine if you go on a speed awareness course?

No – you do not pay the £100 fixed penalty on top of the course. The course fee replaces the fine, it does not sit alongside it. That is a really common worry, and Reddit threads are full of people asking whether it is “£100 plus points plus the course.” It is not. You pay the course fee (around £80-£100) and that is the end of it. Once you complete the course, gov.uk confirms no further action is taken for that offence: no fine, no points.

Think of it as the police offering you a swap. Instead of £100 and 3 points, you take a similarly priced course and keep your record clean. For most drivers that is an easy trade.

Do you still get 3 points if you do the speed awareness course?

No. This is the whole point of the course, and it is the single biggest reason to take it. Complete a speed awareness course and no penalty points are added to your licence for that offence. Your licence stays clean, with no endorsement code recorded against it.

That matters more than the money. When you accept the fixed penalty instead, gov.uk confirms the endorsement code stays on your licence for 4 years from the date of the offence for a standard speeding conviction (code SP30 and similar). A clean licence with no SP codes is worth far more than the £100 over those four years, mostly because of what it does to your insurance. If you want the full picture on how endorsements build up and when a ban kicks in, we cover that in our guide on how many points you can have on your licence.

How long is a speed awareness course?

Plan for around three hours, though it varies a little by format:

• In person: roughly 3 to 4 hours, including registration and a short break. TTC Group, one of the main national providers, lists its NSAC as three hours including registration and breaks.
• Online: typically 2.5 to 3 hours over a video platform such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Either way it is a single sitting on a fixed date and time that you book in advance – not a “do it whenever” online module you click through at 11pm. You will be in a small group with a trained course leader, watching some hazard-perception clips, then discussing speed, stopping distances and why the limits are set where they are. It is a workshop, not a lecture, and honestly most people come away having learned something useful.

Is it cheaper to do a speed awareness course online or in person?

The fee is usually the same whether you do it online or in a classroom – the price is set by the provider and force area, not by the format. What changes is convenience, not cost. Online saves you the travel and tends to run slightly shorter (about 2.5-3 hours versus 3-4 in person), which is why so many people now choose the virtual option.

A couple of practical things for the online version: you will need a quiet, private room, a device with a working camera and microphone, and a stable connection. Most providers require your camera and mic on for the whole session so they can see you are engaged. If your broadband is shaky, the in-person course is the safer bet.

Will I get a speed awareness course doing 37 in a 30?

Very likely, yes – 37mph in a 30 sits comfortably inside the usual speed awareness threshold, so as long as you meet the other conditions you would normally be offered the course. Whether you are offered one depends on how far over the limit you were and whether you are otherwise eligible, and the police decide case by case.

As a rough guide, forces generally start acting at about 10% + 2mph over the limit, and the upper cut-off for a course is usually around 10% + 9mph. Go faster than that and you are typically outside the threshold and heading for points or court instead. Here is how that maps onto common limits, and if you are ever unsure which limit applies to the road you are on, our guide to UK speed limits for cars, vans and towing sets them out by vehicle:

Speed limit	Course usually offered up to	Above this, expect points/court
20mph	around 31mph	32mph+
30mph	around 42mph	43mph+
40mph	around 53mph	54mph+
50mph	around 64mph	65mph+
60mph	around 75mph	76mph+
70mph	around 86mph	87mph+

Treat those as typical thresholds, not a guarantee – the offer is always at the discretion of the police in your area. But 37 in a 30 is well within the 30mph band, so a course is the likely outcome for an otherwise clean licence.

How many points is 40mph in a 30?

Doing 40 in a 30 is still inside the usual speed awareness band (up to around 42mph in a 30), so more often than not it means no points and the offer of a course rather than an automatic endorsement. If you are not offered a course and accept the fixed penalty instead, the standard speeding penalty from gov.uk is 3 penalty points and a £100 fine.

Points only climb above three when the speed is high enough for the case to go to court. Serious speeding can carry 3 to 6 points or a short disqualification, and the fine at court can reach up to £1,000 (or £2,500 if you were on a motorway), per gov.uk. But for a straightforward 40-in-a-30 on a clean record, a course keeping you at zero points is the typical result.

Why keeping points off matters most for new drivers

Here is the bit I hammer home with anyone who has just passed. If you are within your first two years of passing your first test, you sit under the Road Traffic (New Drivers) Act 1995, and 6 penalty points revokes your licence entirely. You go back to a provisional, and you have to pass both the theory and the practical test again before you can drive unaccompanied.

Do the maths. One speeding conviction is 3 points. A second within two years, and you are at 6 – licence gone, back to square one. A speed awareness course keeps that first offence at zero points, which for a new driver can be the difference between a clean licence and starting all over again. That is not a scare tactic, it is just how the Act works, and it is why I always tell newly passed drivers to take the course if it is offered. If the worst does happen and you need to requalify, our Advanced intensive course is built for drivers who need to rebuild quickly and get test-ready again, and you can see how our intensive courses work if you are weighing up your options.

There is a knock-on effect on insurance too. Points push up premiums for years, and new-driver cover is already the priciest there is. Keep the licence clean and you protect the one thing that keeps those quotes from climbing even higher.

Do I need to tell my insurer about a speed awareness course?

Generally no – because a speed awareness course is not a conviction and adds no points, most UK insurers do not require you to declare it, and it should not affect your premium. You have not been convicted of anything; you have taken an educational course instead.

That said, insurers set their own questions. A small number specifically ask whether you have attended a course, and if a policy asks you a direct question, you must answer it honestly – never lie on an insurance form, or you risk the policy being void when you need it most. The safe rule: if they ask, tell them; if they do not ask, you are not obliged to volunteer it. If you are unsure, check the exact wording on your policy or ring the insurer.

Who is offered a speed awareness course? Eligibility explained

You cannot simply choose to take a course – you can only book one if you have been invited by the police. gov.uk is explicit: “You can only take a National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme course if you’ve got a letter inviting you to take a course.” From there, the usual conditions are:

• You were caught within the speed threshold for a course (roughly up to 10% + 9mph over the limit).
• You have not taken a speed awareness course in the past 3 years for a speeding offence. This is measured from the date of your original offence, not the date you last attended.
• You returned your paperwork in time. You normally have to respond to the Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) within the deadline stated on it (commonly 28 days) – miss that window and the course may be off the table.
• The offence was in England or Wales (Scotland does not run the scheme in the same way).

If you have been fined but not offered a course, one of those conditions usually explains it. And to be clear, the course is an alternative to points, not a way to wipe points you already have.

Can you fail a speed awareness course? Is it hard to pass?

There is no test at the end, so in the normal sense you cannot fail it, and it is not hard to pass. You are not sitting an exam or being scored on driving knowledge. Turn up on time, stay engaged, keep your camera on for the online version, and you will complete it without any trouble.

The one way to “fail” is a conduct issue: arriving late, not paying attention, being disruptive, or – for online courses – refusing to have your camera and microphone on. If the course leader decides you have not genuinely taken part, they can mark it as not completed, and then the offer reverts to the original penalty (the fine and points). So it is worth taking seriously for a few hours. Do that and you are fine. There is nothing to revise and nothing to be nervous about.

Driving to the standard, not just the limit

Speed awareness courses exist because speed is a major factor in serious collisions, and the aim is to make you a safer, more aware driver. Speed choice, observation and reading the road are exactly the areas examiners watch on test too – “not making proper use of speed” and poor observation regularly appear among the most common reasons people fail the driving test. A fair few of those faults start with misreading one sign, and the white circle with the black diagonal stripe is the one drivers most often get wrong. Building those habits early keeps points off your licence and gets you through your test in the first place.

At GetMyPass, our intensive driving courses aim to make you genuinely road-ready, not just test-ready. If you are still part way through learning, or coming back after a setback, get started with a course built around where you are now.