Britain’s most senior traffic policeman could be banned from driving after allegedly being caught doing 90mph on a 60mph road.

If convicted, Med Hughes, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, would probably have to resign as head of roads policing at the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Mr Hughes was allegedly caught while on holiday in North Wales, where the chief constable is Richard Brunstrom, Mr Hughes’s predecessor in the Acpo role and the most zealous advocate for greater speed-camera enforcement.

Mr Hughes has two previous speeding offences, but they were much less serious and, because they were committed more than three years ago, the six penalty points have been removed from his licence.

Under Acpo guidelines, North Wales police must take Mr Hughes to court for the latest alleged offence because the recorded speed was so far above the limit. The guidelines state that drivers caught doing 86mph or more in a 60mph limit zone should appear before magistrates rather then be offered a fixed penalty of £60 and three penalty points.

Magistrates have the power to fine the driver up to £1,000 and impose up to six penalty points or a one-month driving ban.

The offence was allegedly committed in May on the A5 near Chirk. Mr Hughes is due to appear at Wrexham Magistrates’ Court on November 21.

South Yorkshire Police said: “Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes has received a notice of prosecution in respect of an alleged driving offence in North Wales in the early morning of a Bank Holiday Monday in May while on holiday. No summons has yet been received.”

The force did not indicate how Mr Hughes intended to plead or whether he would seek to raise mitigating factors to avoid a driving ban.

An Acpo spokesman suggested that the alleged offence was less serious than it appeared because it took place “at 8am on a multi-lane road”.

Acpo appeared to be undertaking a damage-limitation exercise last night by saying that Mr Hughes was already in the process of standing down from his traffic role “to concentrate on other things” before news of the prosecution came to light yesterday. It is thought that he plans to devote more time to his role as spokesman on uniform operations. He took over from Mr Brunstrom last year and would normally have been expected to serve for several years.

In an interview with The Times in May, Mr Hughes said that he would have resigned from the Acpo role if he had reached nine penalty points, leaving him one offence away from an automatic six-month ban.

“I try my hardest to stick within the limit,” was his cautious answer when asked if he still sometimes broke the limit in his Audi A8.

In contrast to his predecessor, he said that being absolutist about speed limits would alienate the public and that he was more willing to show understanding towards drivers who broke the limit on empty, nonresidential roads.

He voiced support for the idea of raising the limit on certain roads in certain conditions, including making 80mph the legal limit on motorways.

Kevin Delaney, former head of the Metropolitan Police traffic division and now road safety spokesman for the IAM Motoring Trust, said that a speeding ban would make it “very difficult” for Mr Hughes to remain in his job at Acpo.“Mr Hughes is not above the law. He is a chief constable whose role is not only to operate the law but to obey it,” he said.

The Traffic Taleban

— Richard Brunstrom has been so fervent in pursuing speeders that his North Wales force is known as the Traffic Taleban

— In April 2003 his force issued 4,200 speeding tickets. In a six-month period it handed out over 20,000 tickets

— However, it only solved 18 out of 296 burglaries and 41 of 693 vehicle crimes

— In April he showed photographs of a decapitated motorcyclist, without the family’s consent, during a presentation on road safety

— In 2003, Mr Brunstrom called for the number of cameras to be trebled as well as the annual number of speeding tickets to increase from 1 million to 3 million by 2004

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