Sir Idris Elba, the acclaimed actor and DJ, has been convicted and fined after being caught exceeding a 20mph speed limit on his scooter along Chelsea Embankment in central London.
The 53-year-old was prosecuted by the Metropolitan Police for the speeding offence, which occurred last June.
The star admitted to being the rider, but contended that he had not received a fixed penalty fine from the police, thereby denying him the opportunity to resolve the matter out of court.
Following representation by specialist motoring offence lawyers, Sir Idris was handed a £147 fine at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last Thursday.
During a hearing conducted behind closed doors, the actor was also issued three penalty points on his licence and ordered to pay £110 in costs, alongside a £59 victim surcharge.
Police presented three images to the court, showing Sir Idris riding a BMW moped at 28mph on a stretch of road with a 20mph limit, near Cheyne Walk.
The incident took place just a day after it was announced that Sir Idris would be collaborating with the King on a Netflix film commemorating 50 years of Charles’s charity, The King’s Trust.
Towards the end of last year, the star of TV series Luther and The Wire was awarded a knighthood for his own extensive charity work.
According to court documents, Sir Idris’s moped triggered a speed camera at 10.12am on 21 June last year. A police statement confirmed: “The speed recorded was 28mph on a 20mph road.”
A police staff member stated that Sir Idris “confirmed that they were the driver/rider at the time” after receiving correspondence from 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 staff member further noted that the film star was offered a fixed penalty to settle the matter but did not pay it or provide his driving licence details.
However, Sir Idris’s lawyers at Patterson Law, a firm specialising in motoring offences, informed the court that the fixed penalty notice never arrived.
Their letter stated: “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.
“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 highlighted that the actor held a clean driving licence and was pleading guilty to the offence, thereby avoiding the expense of a trial.
The letter continued: “We would ask the court to consider replicating the fixed penalty by imposing no more than a £100 fine, with no award for costs. 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 handled through the Single Justice Procedure, a fast-track process enabling magistrates to deal with low-level criminal cases in private, based solely on written evidence. Sir Idris was not required to attend court for the sentencing.
