The director of the Oxford Preservation Trust failed to get a driving ban overturned.

Debbie Dance said she was suffering “exceptional hardship” in an attempt to overturn the six-month ban.

The 51-year-old, of The Green, Marsh Baldon, was given an automatic ban when magistrates put six points on her licence after she failed to provide information about the identity of a driver when her Mini was caught speeding. It took her points’ total to 12.

At Oxford Crown Court, Dance, a governor of Headington School and chairman of the Historic Towns Forum, said she had to walk a mile along a dangerous unlit road with no pavement to catch buses in Nuneham Courtenay.

She said work as a trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust took her all over the country.

She said: “I have a very positive personality and I try very hard not to allow it to get me down, and try by juggling everything I can. I have done it for six weeks and it’s just not sustainable.

“I’m having to rely very heavily on other people, and people whose commitments are very constrained themselves. I find it very, very difficult.”

The court heard Dance had escaped a ban once before after magistrates acknowledged the care of her elderly mother and parents-in-law were exceptional circumstances.

Upholding the ban on Friday, Judge Terence Maher said: “We’re dealing here with a mature lady who is suffering hardship and inconvenience and, I regret to say, there’s nothing exceptional about it.

“She will have to bite the bullet and get through the next few months.

“Disqualification is meant to cause hardship. It’s meant to have this impact.”

Dance must pay £260 costs.