A reality TV star has been given three points on her licence and ordered to pay £880 for diverting her attention from the road to a pamphlet about horses.

Harriet Loder, who appeared in E4 series Made in Chelsea, failed to turn up to her sentencing at South East Suffolk Magistrates’ Court, in Ipswich, on Monday.

In her absence, magistrates imposed three penalty points on the 28-year-old’s licence and ordered her to pay a £115 fine, £650 in costs and a £30 mandatory fee towards victim services.

Loder was driving on a revoked licence when her silver Mini Cooper was stopped by Pc Hylton Garrick in Newmarket last March.

The horse breeder, who runs a racing stud at Newmarket’s Marwell Park, had denied driving without proper control and otherwise than in accordance with a licence – but the case was proved in her absence when she failed to appear before magistrates in Ipswich last month.

Pc Garrick had spotted Loder’s car travelling along High Street just before 1pm on March 3.

The officer was parked near the entrance to Queensberry Road when he saw Loder with what he initially thought was a mobile phone in her right hand.

“I could clearly see she was looking at it, and not where she was going,” he told the court in January.

“I pulled out behind her and waited for a safe space to illuminate my blue lights.

“When I approached the car and explained I thought she was holding a phone, she was quite adamant she wasn’t. She picked up a leaflet from the passenger seat and said ‘I was reading this’. It had pictures of horses on it.

“I explained that, if she was reading something while driving, she couldn’t have been paying full attention.”

Loder, who appeared in series three of Made in Chelsea, was issued a traffic offence report – on the back of which she wrote her signature and ‘I don’t agree’.

“I don’t believe she was disagreeing with the fact she was committing an offence,” added Pc Garrick.

“She had already accepted she was reading the document.”

It was later established the licence Loder presented had been previously revoked.

Loder, whose uncle bred champion racehorses Marwell and Marling, already had four penalty points on her licence, which was taken away in May 2015 under totting-up rules.