A number of drink drivers have been banned from the roads
Breath tests are carried out at the roadside(Image: Liam McBurney/PA Wire)
How did you spend your New Year’s Eve?
Perhaps you spread yourself across the sofa watching whatever film tickled your fancy?
Maybe you hit the shops to get a new outfit for the evening’s celebrations?
Not me, I spent mine in a courtroom full of shame-faced drink-drivers who are starting 2026 with driving bans for their criminal misdemeanours.
The crime is one of the police’s so-called “Fatal 4” offences which lead to death and serious injuries on our roads and every December the force runs a Christmas awareness campaign urging people to leave their vehicles at home when going out celebrating.
But, sadly, the message is still not getting through to some.
Here’s a round-up of what took place inside courtroom one at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court on December 31, 2025.
Father-of-two Nicola Prentice was followed by the police leaving the Unicorn Inn, in Newton Solney, on December 13 after information was received that he was going to get into his car after drinking.
The 37-year-old maintenance engineer, of Barnes Lane, Blackfordby, Swadlincote, was pulled over because his car was “drifting onto the wrong side of the road”, something the defendant later denied.
Prosecutor Seema Mistry said after stopping on Main Street, Repton, when the blue lights were illuminated, the officer described the 37-year-old as “slurring his words” and smelling of alcohol.
A test saw him blow 78 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath when the legal limit is 35.
Now he has been disqualified from driving for 18 months, fined £600 and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £160 victim surcharge.
Loscoe mum Sally Miles crashed her car in Heanor Market Place on her way back from Christmas shopping with her adult son, at around 9.40pm on December 12.
When asked by the police if she would fail a roadside breath test, the 48-year-old, who runs a business with her husband, replied “of course” before blowing 127 – more than three times the legal limit, Miss Mistry told the court.
The MOT on the car the defendant, of Flamstead Avenue, was driving had also expired in September.
Kirsty Sargent, mitigating, said: “She accepts she should not have been driving” as her “nervous and emotional” client was fined £200, ordered to pay £85 costs, an £80 victim surcharge and was disqualified from driving for 22 months.
Debora Cumberland, 60, of Belvoir Close, Kirk Hallam, didn’t even realise she had collided with another car in Stanhope Street, Stanton-by-Dale, when she was arrested on December 11.
Miss Mistry said the defendant had been serving wine and cheese at the care home where she works and thought she had only consumed “a couple of glasses” herself.
But her reading of 67 – almost twice the limit – showed otherwise and she was banned from the roads for 17 months, fined £253 and was ordered to pay £85 costs and a £101 victim surcharge.
And 21-year-old Georgia Saunders, of Glenmore Drive, Stenson Fields, defended herself after pleading guilty to drink-driving when she blew 41 after being stopped and tested at 3.15am on December 14 in Kingsway, Derby.
The unemployed defendant told the court: “It will never happen again, I regret everything that happened that night and I take full responsibility for all I have done.
“I did not realise how much I had drunk and I thought I would be okay to drive but again I completely regret it.”
She was fined £80, ordered to pay £85 cost, a £32 victim surcharge and was disqualified from driving for a year.
So as 2025 comes to a close and we welcome the new year, maybe the cases above might give some people food for thought should they be tempted to grab their keys and hop behind the wheel after too much boozing?
