you do not get a ban automatically,you can go to court and plead your case and sometimes it works and you can avoid a ban,but if you do get a ban,its usually 6 months.
You need to plead special circumstances, i.e loss of job, financial hardship etc
You can only plead it once, my brother avoided a ban because he was a director of a company and he said the employees would lose there job. He now has ban insurance, if he gets banned he gets a driver
The normal rule is a 6 months ban. You can ploead 'exceptional hardship' once only as suggested above. This really does mean what it says and is not easy to do. Simple loss of job is not by itself taken as enough by many benches.