Price transparency for motoring offences (summary only)
Defence of summary-only motoring offences dealt with in the magistrates' court — speeding, using a phone at the wheel, careless driving, drink-driving and similar charges that cannot go to the Crown Court. If your firm's website offers this service, Rule 1 of the SRA Transparency Rules sets out exactly what price information the site must publish.
Sources last verified: 2026-08-14.1 — official SRA links are cited in each section.
Does this apply to your firm?
Any regulated firm offering motoring defence work on its website. Most firms price this as a fixed fee per hearing, which makes the rule easy to satisfy — provided the page is precise about what the fee buys.
What must be published for motoring offences (summary only)
- The fixed fee (or range) and, crucially, its unit: does it cover the whole case or a single hearing?
- Exactly what is included: taking instructions, reviewing the evidence, preparation, and attendance at one hearing by a named level of representative (solicitor or counsel).
- What is excluded — additional hearings after an adjournment, special-reasons or exceptional-hardship arguments, appeals to the Crown Court — and how those are charged.
- That the published pricing covers summary-only matters, so a reader charged with a more serious either-way offence knows the figures don't apply.
- Whether VAT is included in the displayed fee.
- Who conducts the hearing and their experience, plus the key stages: instruction, plea, hearing — with typical timescales set by the court listing.
Official source: SRA — Transparency in price and service guidance · Sources last verified: 2026-08-11
Disbursements to describe
Disbursements are costs payable to third parties that your firm handles on the client's behalf. The rule expects them described and priced (or ranged) — for this service that typically means:
- Counsel's or agent's fees where an advocate other than the named fee earner attends.
- Expert evidence — for example forensic analysis of breath or blood readings in drink-driving cases.
- Mileage and travel to court where charged.
For every disbursement, say whether VAT applies to it — mixing VAT-inclusive fees with VAT-silent third-party costs is one of the most frequent findings on otherwise careful pages.
Common gaps on live sites
A fixed fee that silently assumes a guilty plea at a single hearing, with contested trials priced nowhere.
No statement of what happens to the fee when the court adjourns — the most common real-world surprise.
Exceptional-hardship and special-reasons arguments (the work clients most often actually need) excluded without saying so.
The summary-only scope not stated, implying the price covers matters it doesn't.
These are patterns seen across real firm websites — none of them implies bad faith. Pages get edited, calculators break, and requirements written for lawyers get trimmed by marketing. That's an argument for checking the live page regularly, not for blame.
Is your motoring offences (summary only) page still saying what it should?
FirmProof runs automated monitoring checks against your live public pages every week and keeps dated evidence of what was found. Start with the free scan — no account, one scan a day.
Check your own site