Red light fine
The offence most searches call a “red light fine” is, in the statute, wider than red lights: RTA 1988 s.36 covers every traffic sign prescribed by regulation. This page states the one Schedule 2 row that covers it, and where the wording is broader than the search term, says so.
First, the scope
Wider than red lights
The offence most searches call a “red light fine” is not, in the statute, limited to red lights.
RTA 1988 s.36 covers failing to comply with a traffic sign prescribed by regulation — stop signs, give-way lines and traffic-light signals alike, not red lights on their own. Running a red light is this row’s most common real-world use, which is why the market searches for it by that name, but the schedule’s own wording is broader than the search term.
The penalty
One row, and what it states
Both the disqualification and the endorsement cells are conditional, and the schedule’s own conditional wording is kept rather than simplified into a plain “yes”.
- Offence
- Failing to comply with traffic signs
- Provision
- RTA 1988 s.36
- Maximum punishment
- Level 3
- Disqualification
- Discretionary, conditional (only for a sign specified by regulation under s.36)
- Endorsement
- Obligatory if committed as mentioned in the entry in column 5
- Points
- 3
Sourced — legislationRTA 1988 s.36 · RTOA 1988 Sch.2 Pt.Ilegislation.gov.ukSLD current text, fetched 2026-08-02
The rest of the mechanics
What this page does not repeat
Two things every reader of this row eventually wants, both already covered in full elsewhere on this site.
The maximum above is a level on the standard scale, not an amount — what a level resolves to, for both jurisdictions, is on the penalties page’s standard-scale table. And how an endorsable road-traffic offence is actually dealt with — the out-of-court fixed penalty against the court route, and the deadlines each one runs on — is covered once, in full, on the fixed penalty notice page, rather than repeated here for this one offence.
Where this applies. This site answers for England and Wales and for Scotland. It does not answer for Northern Ireland: the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 does not extend there (s.99(7)), and Northern Ireland runs a separate Road Traffic (Northern Ireland) Order regime that is not among this site’s sources. Figures here are Great Britain figures, not UK-wide ones.