A retired solicitor says that more than 1,600 people may be able to overturn speeding tickets after winning a landmark court case.

Sandra Upton, and another motorist Alan Taylor, challenged their summonses for speeding on the A20 from Folkestone to Dover during the implementation of Dover TAP(Traffic Assessment Project) last summer.

They convinced a judge that the wording of Highways Agency speed limit order was not enforceable because it was poorly drafted and too ambiguous.

Mrs Upton, of Kingsdown, told Kent Online: “By a Freedom of Information request I found that 1,617 were fined during the affected period of June and December last year, paying a total of more than £200,000 in fines and costs.

“They need to send a copy of this judgement to the police, challenge their summons and request a refund.”

Mr Taylor, of Aycliffe, had been summonsed for travelling at 69 mph, over a 40mph limit, on the coastbound A20 at Dover last August 7.

Mrs Upton ha been clocked at driving at 51mph against that limit on the same road last August 25.

Neither denied the speeds they were driving.

But Mrs Upton had argued in court that while she saw the 40mph speed limits she thought that they did not apply as they had been left over from a recent series of Operation Stack.

These had been continually implemented between late June and early August last year because of the knock-on effects of continual disruption from French strikers at Calais and illegal immigrants trying to get into Britain.

Mrs Upton and Mr Taylor argued that the order was based on a section of the Traffic Regulation Act 1984, which is specifically for works rather than one that is for the risk of danger.

District Judge Justin Barron, at Folkestone Magistrates Court, found both Mrs Upton and Mr Taylor not guilty of speeding. He concluded that the the orders’s wording also added confusion about when Dover TAP (Traffic Assessment Project) was in place.

This is the system, between the Roundhill Tunnels at Folkestone and the Western Heights Roundabout at Dover, of controlling the flow of lorries going along the A20 to the Port of Dover to prevent congestion in the town.

In his written judgement, dated Monday last week he said: “The order is in places very poorly drafted and many of the criticisms ledvelled by Mrs Upton are justified.

“The order was, to put it bluntly, a cut and paste job that was not adequately checked in circumstances in which the enforcement measures put in place would inevitably lead to a significant number of fixed penalties being issued and some prosecutions."