EastEnders actress Jacqueline Jossa has been landed with a court bill of more than £1,400 and a criminal conviction after suffering a postbox blunder with a speeding ticket.
The 32-year-old star broke the 50mph speed limit back in February when behind the wheel of a BMW as she used the Dartford Crossing.
Jossa had the chance to deal with the incident by paying a fine and taking a speed awareness course. But she did not respond to a letter from Essex Police, leading to the force taking her to court.
The actress, who is now in her second stint as Lauren Branning on BBC flagship soap EastEnders, offered her apologies to the court as she pleaded guilty to speeding, saying she had failed to spot a letter from the police lurking in the postbox of her Billericay home.
Jossa told a court her speed had “drifted up” when she was caught by a speed camera on February 18 at around 9:30am.
Court papers show she was driving at 59mph in a 50mph zone on a stretch of the Dartford Crossing stretch of the A282.
Essex Police sent an initial notice of intended prosecution, with an offer to deal with the offence out of court, on February 21.
But the force said she “failed to complete a retraining course, or conditional offer of fixed penalty process as payment not made and driving licence details were not received for endorsement. The retraining course was not completed.”
Jossa was prosecuted under the Single Justice Procedure, a court process which takes place behind closed doors and allows criminal cases to be dealt with on written evidence alone.
The prosecution letter was sent at the end of July, and Jossa pleaded guilty online at the end of September.
In her online plea, Jossa wrote: “I was travelling with the traffic and failed to notice my speed had drifted up, while the limit dropped just before the tunnel.
By the way apologies for this being late, the letter got stuck in the bottom of my postbox and I’ve only just found it”
At Colchester magistrates court last week, the star was convicted and ordered to pay a total of £1,412, comprising a £923 fine, £120 in costs, and a victim surcharge of £369.
She will also receive three points on her driving licence.
Jossa first joined EastEnders in 2010 as a teenager, and left in 2018. She went on to win the nineteenth series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here in 2021, and rejoined the soap in 2023.
She is married to TV personality and reality star Dan Osborne, with whom she shares two children. Jossa won Best Actress at the 2013 Inside Soap Awards, and was named Best Newcomer at the 2012 NTAs.
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