The areas with the most penalised drivers revealed

West Yorkshire has the highest percentage of drivers with penalty points on their driving licence, according to new research.

Analysis of DVLA data has revealed that eight of the 10 postcodes with the highest percentage of penalised drivers are in the county, with the other two being in Merseyside.

Top of the table was L24 in Liverpool and East Merseyside with 15.2 per cent of drivers having points, while nearby L28 was sixth with 13.8 per cent.

The rest of the top five was made up of BD3 in Bradford (14.5 per cent), LS9 in East Leeds (14.3 per cent), WF13 in Wakefield (14.05 per cent) and BD1 in Bradford (14 per cent).

In seventh, ninth and 10th were BD9, DB4 and BD5, all in Bradford, while LS12 in south-west Leeds was eighth. All of these postcodes were at just over 13 per cent.

In stark contrast, EC4V in central London had the lowest percentage of penalised drivers, being the only area to register zero per cent.

Collingwood Insurance Services, which conducted the research, removed postcodes with fewer than 150 registered licence holders to avoid skewing the results, making EC4V’s result all the more impressive.

EC4A in Holborn (1.8 per cent) and EC2E in Covent Garden (two per cent) were the other London postcodes to make it into the areas with the lowest percentage of penalised drivers.

Meanwhile PA48 and PA43 on the Isle of Islay and KA27 on the Isle of Arran, both in Scotland, were in the five least penalised areas with less than two per cent each.

The research also looked at the number of provisional licence holders in each area and found that many of the spots with the highest number of penalised drivers also have high numbers of provisional licence holders.

For example, L24 has 41 per cent of potential road users holding a green licence while BD3 has 42 per cent. However, GU13 in Guildford has the highest number of provisional licence drivers on the road at 68 per cent.