Helen Flanagan banned from driving despite claiming hardship

By Eleanor Barlow, PA

Former Coronation Street actress Helen Flanagan has been banned from driving for six months despite claiming it would cause her “exceptional hardship”.

The 34-year-old said her boyfriend Robbie Talbot was driving her Audi when it was caught speeding twice in Merseyside in June last year.

She appeared at Wirral Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged with two counts of failing to give information relating to the identification of a driver.

Magistrates said they were not satisfied a ban would cause Flanagan, who already had six points on her licence, exceptional hardship and also ordered her to pay a £2,000 fine, £800 victim surcharge and £110 prosecution costs.

Flanagan said the remote location of her Bolton home meant she would “really struggle without a car”.

The mother-of-three said she was “struggling” financially and would not be able to afford taxis to take her youngest son Charlie to nursery.

She said: “My job really is being a mum at home. Their dad works away. It’s really difficult at the moment now for me to be earning money. I earn money on social media but it kind of varies what I earn.”

She added: “I think there might be a perception maybe that I would easily be able to afford a driver but that’s quite far from the case.

“I’ve got enough money in my account to pay off my tax and my VAT and basically that’s about it.”

When asked, she said an Uber to the nursery cost about £10.

She added: “If I was doing that all the time it would be very, very expensive for me.”

She said she would need to contact her accountant for details on exactly how much she earned but said last year she made “about 70”.

She said she also needed the car to take her two older children to after-school activities, go to her therapist in Birmingham and meet her ex-partner, footballer Scott Sinclair, at a service station in Birmingham when the children went to stay with him.

Asked if she had spoken to Sinclair about whether other arrangements could be made when he saw their children, Flanagan said: “No, I haven’t. I’ve got a very difficult relationship with my ex-partner. It’s very, very draining.”

The actress said she saw had anxiety and ADHD.

She said: “I do struggle with anxiety and I have terrible OCD. I do really, really struggle with my ADHD so it does really impact my life in general really.”

She said she had told Mr Talbot, who sat at the back of court for the hearing, he needed to reply to police when she had received the speeding fines.

She said: “I very stupidly and naively thought it was acceptable for my boyfriend to reply on my behalf to explain to the police it was him that (was) driving, it wasn’t me.”

Chairman of the magistrates’ bench David Holley asked Flanagan if Mr Talbot would be able to drive her car if she was banned.

She said: “I would feel really, really angry if my boyfriend was to take that away from me and then he’d drive my car. I don’t think that would sit well with me.”

Patrick Boyers, defending, said: “She is a single mother of three children and she is doing her best.

“I would invite you to see round the haze of social media influencer branding. I would invite you to look at this case on the cold, hard facts of who is in front of you and I would invite you to find that exceptional hardship is a real possibility.”

Flanagan nodded when she was sentenced and offered to pay the fine in £1,000 monthly instalments.

She was given six penalty points for each offence.