Long Sutton man appears in King’s Lynn court after driving while disqualified in Watlington

A man with “a tendency to put his foot down” insisted he did not know he was banned from driving when police caught him on a village road.

Connor Coombs, 25, appeared at Lynn Magistrates’ Court on Thursday charged with two offences.

He pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and without a valid MOT – offences he committed on August 6.

Crown prosecutor Nicola Lamb told magistrates that on that date, police saw Coombs driving his black Ford Fiesta along St Peters Road in Watlington. A quick check through the national register revealed he had no valid test certificate.

Officers subsequently pulled him over, and then discovered that Coombs had been banned from driving after failing to respond to a Section 172 notice handed to him via the Road Traffic Act. This relates to providing information about the identity of a vehicle’s driver.

Magistrates were told that Coombs was handed three penalty points in April for a speeding offence he committed in Whaplode, Lincolnshire in 2021. He was then handed a further three points last month after speeding again.

Prior to that, he already had six points – meaning he was disqualified from driving through ‘totting up’.

However, Coombs insisted in court that he had never received any correspondence about this and therefore did not know he was banned.

Magistrates, led by Terrance Geater, took that information on board and put the speeding offence to Coombs again. He pleaded guilty, and was fined £253.

“For the MOT, I totally messed up – that is my fault,” Coombs, of Seagate Terrace in Long Sutton, Lincolnshire, said.

Mr Geater said Coombs has a “tendency to put his foot down” before disqualifying him from driving for a further three months due to the number of points of his licence.

He will also pay £105 in court costs and a £101 victim surcharge, and was handed no separate penalty for driving without an MOT.