Idris Elba convicted and fined by court over scooter speeding offence

By Tristan Kirk, Press Association, Courts Editor

Idris Elba has been convicted and fined after he was caught breaking a 20mph speed limit while riding his scooter along Chelsea Embankment in central London.

The award-winning actor and DJ, 53, was prosecuted by the Metropolitan Police over a speeding offence which happened last June.

Idris Elba admitted being the guilty rider, but argued he had not received a fixed penalty fine from the police, and was therefore denied the chance to deal with the matter out of court.

After hiring specialist motoring offence lawyers to plead his case with a magistrate, Idris Elba was handed a £147 fine at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last Thursday.

At a hearing conducted behind closed doors, the star was given three penalty points for his licence, and was also ordered to pay £110 in costs and a £59 victim surcharge.

The police presented three images to the court, showing Idris Elba riding a scooter at 28mph along Chelsea Embankment near to Cheyne Walk, on a stretch of road with a 20mph speed limit.

The incident happened a day after it was announced that the actor is collaborating with the King for a Netflix film about 50 years of Charles’s charity The King’s Trust.

At the end of last year, it was announced that the star of TV’s Luther and The Wire has been awarded a knighthood for his own charity work.

According to court papers, Idris’ BMW moped triggered a speed camera at 10:12am on June 21st last year.

“The speed recorded was 28mph on a 20mph road,” a police statement set out.

A police staff member said Sir Idris “confirmed that they were the driver/rider at the time” after being written to by the police.

They added: “An automated eligibility check was completed on the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme database (NDORS).

“The driver/rider, Mr Idris Elba, was ineligible for a diversionary course.”

The police staff member said the film star was offered a fixed penalty to deal with the matter, but he did not pay it or provide details of his driving licence.

However, Idris’ lawyers at Patterson Law, a firm which specialises in motoring offences, told the court the fixed penalty notice never arrived.

“Mr Elba initially responded to the Notice of Intended Prosecution to nominate himself as the driver and was expecting to receive a fixed penalty offer,” the letter says.

“However, the offer never arrived and he therefore never had the opportunity to accept it.

“Had he received it, he absolutely would have accepted it.”

The law firm said the actor had a clean driving licence and was pleading guilty to the offence, sparing the expense of a trial.

“We would ask the court to consider replicating the fixed penalty by imposing no more than a £100 fine, with no award for costs,” the letter continues.

“He never received the fixed penalty – and this was through no fault of his own. It would therefore not be in the interests of justice to impose further financial penalties for something which was not his fault.”

The prosecution was dealt with in the Single Justice Procedure, a fast-track process which allows magistrates to sit in private and deal with low-level criminal cases based on written evidence alone.

Idris Elba was not required to attend court for the case to be sentenced.