Sir Idris Elba has been convicted and fined for speeding at 28mph on his BMW moped in a 20mph zone.

The ‘Luther’ and ‘The Wire’ hardman was hit with a £147 fine after his hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court last Thursday.

The 53-year-old actor and DJ was caught riding along the Chelsea Embankment in central London and admitted to being the guilty rider.

However, he argued he had not received a fixed penalty fine from the police and was therefore denied the chance to deal with the matter outside of court.

He hired specialist motoring offence lawyers to plead his case to magistrates, but he still was slapped with the fine and given three penalty points on his licence.

Magistrates also ordered him to pay £110 in costs and a £59 victim surcharge at the hearing held behind closed doors – taking his total court bill to £316.

Three pictures of Sir Idris riding the scooter at 28mph along Chelsea Embankment near to Cheyne Walk were presented by police to the court. This section of road has a 20mph limit, and Sir Idris was travelling 40 per cent over the limit.

The incident happened last June, a day after it was announced that the actor would be working with the King for a Netflix film about 50 years of Charles’s charity, The King’s Trust.

Sir Idris Elba was caught speeding at 28mph on Chelsea Embankment – a 20mph zone – on his BMW moped

The film star was hit with a £147 fine, three points on his licence, as well as £110 in costs and a £59 victim surcharge, bringing the total cost to  £316

Sir Idris was knighted for his own charity work after he was named in the New Year’s Honours list at the end of last year. 

His BMW moped triggered a speed camera at 10.12am on June 21 last year, according to court papers.

‘The speed recorded was 28mph on a 20mph road,’ a police statement set out.

A police staff member said that Sir Idris had confirmed he had been riding the moped after he was written to by the police.

Police said that he was not eligible for a speed awareness course after they checked the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme database (NDORS).

Courses are not given out to those who have completed one in the last three years, exceeded the speed thresholds for the course, failed to respond to a notice within 28 days or who accepted a fixed penalty notice.

The film star was offered a fixed penalty to deal with the matter, but he did not pay it or provide details of his driving licence, police said.

However, Sir Idris’ lawyers at Patterson Law, a firm which specialises in motoring offences, told the court the fixed penalty notice never arrived.

Their letter read: ‘Mr Elba initially responded to the Notice of Intended Prosecution to nominate himself as the driver and was expecting to receive a fixed penalty offer.

‘However, the offer never arrived and he therefore never had the opportunity to accept it.

‘Had he received it, he absolutely would have accepted it.’

The actor has a clean driving licence and pleaded guilty to the offence, sparing the expense of a trial, the law firm said.

‘We would ask the court to consider replicating the fixed penalty by imposing no more than a £100 fine, with no award for costs,’ the letter continued.

‘He never received the fixed penalty – and this was through no fault of his own. It would therefore not be in the interests of justice to impose further financial penalties for something which was not his fault.’

The prosecution was dealt with in the Single Justice Procedure, a fast-track process which allows magistrates to sit in private and deal with low-level criminal cases based on written evidence alone.

Sir Idris was not required to attend court for the case to be sentenced.