Motorists caught creeping over the speed limit will be able to avoid the traditional punishment of penalty points by spending a day in the classroom.

First time speeders marginally breaking the limit will be invited to pay £60 - the same as a fine - to take a speed awareness course, it was announced yesterday.

Those who take up an offer will not have points put on their licence. More than 52,000 speeders in Lancashire, where the scheme has been tested for three years, took up the offer.

Police and ministers said the aim of the 'one last chance' initiative was to win back public support and to take some of the sting out of the government's controversial speed camera policy, which critics say is a money-making exercise. More than two million motorists were fined £60 and penalised with three points on their licence last year after being snapped by Britain's 6000 cameras.

The scheme was launched yesterday by anti-speeding 'tsar' Richard Brunstrom, the controversial Chief Constable of North Wales Police and outgoing head of roads policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, as he chaired a national road policing conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham. Mr Brunstrom said: "If I have any regret, it is that we didn't start these speed awareness courses earlier. In retrospect, I wish we'd done it at the start."

He claimed that up to 30 per cent of drivers offered the course will take it. Evidence from the trials, held in Avon and Somerset, Staffordshire, Northampton and Lincolnshire showed that around half of speeding drivers are invited to take the courses, but only between 20 per cent and 30 per cent take them up.

The Chief Constable, who once warned speeders: "If you persist in driving like a prat, I am going to do business with you - said there were now enough speed cameras on Britain's roads. I don't think more cameras are necessary," he said, "We are not looking to put a camera on every lamppost or manhole cover."

Road Safety Minister Dr Stephen Ladyman also admitted at the conference that ministers had 'lost the confidence of the motorist' over speed cameras, which the new policy could help restore.

The courses comprise classroom and practical driving lessons teaching errant drivers the danger of breaking the limit. Motorists will take a two-hour and half-hour lesson identifying what causes them to ignore the limit, the consequences of speeding followed by up to three hours of practical training and exercises behind the wheel with an advanced driving instructor.

Drivers caught in a 30mph limit speeding at between 35mph and 39mph may be offered the £60 course instead of penalty points.

In 40mph zones the threshold for eligibility is 46mph to 50mph, on 50mph zones it will be 57mph to 61mph, in 60mph zones from 68mph to 72mph, while in 70mph areas it will be 79mph to 83mph.

Motorists can take only one course in three years.

Mr Brunstrom said: "A national scheme means you could get done for speeding in Devon, but take your course in Edinburgh."

Dr Ladyman admitted: "We've lost the confidence of the motorist. Speed cameras in places where drivers see no danger have given them a bad reputation. So on roads where the speed limit is too low, we are looking at putting the limit up. The speed cameras must be the last resort."