Former Top Gear host Richard Hammond has been fined £999 by a court after he was caught speeding twice in the space of three weeks while driving his luxury cars.
Details of the offences
The 56-year-old presenter was at the wheel of a Porsche when he broke the speed limit on December 2 last year, and he was caught out again just 20 days later while driving a Bentley. West Mercia Police used speed camera images of him driving the cars in Herefordshire to prove the offences.
Hammond was caught by a police officer with a handheld speed camera just before 1pm on December 2. His Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo was clocked at 68mph in a 50mph limit on the A40 in Pencraig, Herefordshire. Then at around 11.45am on December 22, his Bentley Continental GT was speeding at 82mph in a 70mph limit on the A50 Rudhall Overbridge in Herefordshire.
Police tracking and court proceedings
Court papers revealed how police spent weeks sending letters to Hammond’s multimillion-pound portfolio of homes in a bid to track him down. Speeding tickets were sent to a Grade II* listed Herefordshire castle bought by Hammond in 2012 and a £1 million farm estate near Hereford, but the letters were returned marked as "addressee gone away". Eventually, they tracked him down to his £2 million mansion near Abergavenny in Wales, where it was noted more than 30 vehicles are currently registered.
Hammond, who hosted Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and James May between 2002 and 2015 before the trio launched The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, pleaded guilty through his lawyers to two charges of speeding. At Telford Magistrates’ Court last week, he was handed seven penalty points on his licence. Magistrate Ann Minton ordered him to pay a total of £1,771, comprising two fines of £333 and £666, £240 in costs and victim surcharges totalling £532.
Additional charges withdrawn
Hammond was prosecuted for two offences of speeding and two further allegations that he had ignored the police letters and failed to identify himself as the guilty driver. In a letter to the court, his solicitor pleaded guilty to the speeding charges and denied the other two offences, writing: "He replied, identifying himself as the driver. He sent the reply by First Class post. He posted the reply himself." The police force opted to withdraw those extra charges, as Hammond was prosecuted and convicted for the speeding offences in the Single Justice Procedure – a fast-track court process which allows magistrates to sit behind closed doors to deal with low-level criminal cases. He was among 39 defendants who were convicted of driving offences by Ms Milton during the court session on July 22.
