Fines and fees

The court process

Once we’ve received your request to go to court, we will send the following documents to you.

Court Attendance Notice (CAN)	The CAN tells you the place, time and date of the hearing which will be at the court closest to where the offence was committed. If this is not convenient, you can apply to the selected court to have the hearing moved to another court location. Visit the Local Courts website for a list of locations.
Written Notice of Pleading	You will be asked to plead either ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’. You can complete and send this notice to the court before your hearing or you can enter your plea at the hearing. If you’re not sure what to do, we suggest you seek legal advice.

If you choose to plead not guilty, you will be given an additional hearing date.

You'll need to present your case at the hearing.
The authority that issued your fine will present their case too and may call on witnesses and produce other evidence.

Stopping the court process

Once a Court Attendance Notice (CAN) has been issued, this replaces your penalty notice and you can't stop the court process.

The CAN is sometimes issued within 24 hours of the court application and we aim to process all applications within 21 days.
If you have received a CAN and don’t want to proceed with your court challenge, please contact the court listed on the CAN and ask them about your options.

The court will decide your case in one of three ways.

Guilty	You will need to pay a penalty, which the court will set. You will have to pay court costs and may also have to pay the prosecutors’ professional costs. You will lose any applicable demerit points.
Guilty, no conviction recorded	The court may find you guilty but not make you pay a fine. You will have to pay court costs and may also have to pay the prosecutors’ professional costs. The offence will appear on your driving record but you won’t lose any applicable demerit points.
Not guilty	You won’t need to pay a fine or lose demerit points, nor will you have to pay costs.

It can take up to six weeks to assess your application to go to court. We’ll let you know the outcome in writing.

If your application to go to court is successful, we'll take the following steps.

Conduct a further review	We’ll conduct a review using our review guidelines if your application supports your claim.
Apply for a court date	If the review shows there is no reason to cancel the penalty, we’ll ask the court to set a date and contact you in writing with the details.
Refund money to you	If you’ve already paid a fine, we'll refund the money to you and/or reverse any demerit points applied to your driver licence.
Go to court	If you’re successful you won’t have to pay a fine or other costs. If you’re unsuccessful, the court will tell you what you owe, how to pay and your appeal options.