Finepost · Fines · How we check
How we check our figures
Every number on these pages carries a source and a date. This page says what that promise means and how to hold us to it.
Which sources count
GOV.UK, for penalties, procedures and DVLA rules.
The Sentencing Council, for bands, starting points and ranges.
legislation.gov.uk, for the Acts themselves.
Nothing else. Where police or council practice matters it is marked as guidance, not law, and law-firm blogs and news articles are never a source for a number.
What “verified unchanged” means
Where a page says a guideline or table was verified on a date, we opened the living official page on that date and compared it figure by figure against what we publish.
Guideline effective 24 April 2017, verified unchanged July 2026
That line, from the speeding calculator, means exactly that: the official page was opened that day and nothing differed. A check that finds nothing to change is still recorded. Checked is a result.
When we re-check
Each April: the annual uprating instruments.
As they are made: court and tribunal fee orders.
On Ministry of Justice announcements: victim surcharge rates.
Whenever the Sentencing Council consults or amends: the guidelines themselves.
Each calculator shows the date of its last check; each guide shows its own.
Where the tables end
Fines in the magistrates’ courts are guidelines, not tramlines, and councils and forces hold discretion of their own. Our pages say where that line runs and stop at it: what a court or authority will do with any particular case is not arithmetic, and we do not pretend otherwise.
Found an error?
Write to info@finepost.co.uk with the page and the source. Confirmed errors are corrected on the page and the check date is renewed.