Hi OP.
I have some family experience of almost an identical situation and so even though it sounds like you will have reached just 9 points, it’s useful to know what you/any other readers could be dealing with if it were to reach 12.
Safety awareness courses can only be offered once every three years, but won’t always be offered.
The initial contact you receive is just to declare that it was you driving, once you confirm this, they will let you know whether it’s points or an option to do the course. This normally takes a few weeks once you’ve sent the first response.
If you reach, or exceed, 12 points you will not instantly lose your licence. You will need to wait to hear for a court date for this to be made official. When my family member reached 12 points, it took a whole year to hear about the court date, although this was admittedly in Nov 2021 so likely Covid backlogs were still very high.
Be vigilant when filling in any responses to paperwork/online forms. Mistakes can complicate the situation and cause you to be awarded a higher number of points/higher fine for the delayed correct response. Also be vigilant when watching out for contact about a court date. My family member had theirs sent to their parent’s previous address meaning the initial court date had been and passed before we realised that they had in fact been driving unlicensed for a number of weeks without any awareness.
You do not need to attend court to officially have your licence revoked, however if you wish to contest the driving ban, you will need to. The most common way to do this is by pleading ‘exceptional hardship’. This essentially means that a ban being enforced would cause totally unmanageable implications for someone in your life (most likely not yourself, but let’s say a dependent or an employer). You can plead exceptional hardship by yourself or enlist the support of a solicitor. Exceptional hardship cases are not easily won, from my understanding and my family member decided not to go ahead with this option for that reason, despite having already sunk a considerable amount of money into initial legal fees.
Once your ban is in place, you are off the road from that date, generally speaking for 6 months for offences such as yours, increasing to 1 year if it’s not your first ban. Once you approach the end of the 6 month ban you can apply for a new licence in order to begin driving as soon as your six months are done. Your points will have been cleared and you will have a clean licence again. You do not need to re-take your driving test. You will need to continue declaring the ban and conviction for a duration of 5 years to insurers.
I know every speeding ticket is intended to make our roads safer and so the process is a very good thing. But there’s a difference between 24 in a 20 zone and 100 in a 70 zone in that it simply is just easier to happen in seconds, even for the most careful drivers. I hope everything goes ok for you, but if not it will be ok and won’t be as awful as you’re probably imagining. The guilt will almost certainly be the worst part and you’ve already done enough of that so cut yourself some slack now and trust that you have/will firmly have learnt from this experience.