£253.30 rail fine!!!!! Help please!

[ZombieJo]

Hi everyone!

 

Could someone help me please? I have just received a letter from court with a rail fine of £253.30!! This seems very excessive to me. Is this normal?

 

Basically, I boarded a train without a ticket (the ticket is normally £3.30) as I'd left my purse at work (which is where I was going to). I was very honest with the ticket inspectors on the train and advised them that I would pay the full fare on my return journey (which I did!). The ticket inspector took all of my details and said I may receive a letter.

 

I later received a letter asking me to appear in court or plead guilty. The letter implied that I would only be charged for the ticket (£3.30) and court costs (£60). As I have no holiday available from work to attend court and I do not have any proof that I paid the ticket on my return (I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accept that anyway) I wrote back pleading guilty.

 

I have now had this letter stating that I have to pay £253.30 by March 30th! They have broken down this amount into:

Fine: £175.00

Comp: £3.30

Costs: £15.00

Costs: £60.00

Total: £253.30

 

I called the payments and enforcement queries number on the letter, all they could tell me was that the amount was correct!

 

Any advice would be greatly received (I've never had to deal with anything like this before)!? Is it just a case of me having to pay this amount?

 

Thank you!!

[Old-CodJA]

I really am sorry to say that in my experience, this is not an excessive level of fine and yes, that is the total that you now owe to the Court.

 

It may seem harsh in some people's eyes, but it is a fact that the prosecution can be properly brought in cases such as described by you.

 

If any person does not have a ticket for their journey and does not have with them the money to pay the fare on demand, then that person does not have any right to get on board any train.

 

Purchasing a ticket later does not mean you will avoid prosecution. The offence is committed at the time of the journey.

 

You could appeal that you consider the sentence is too harsh given the level of offence and any steps taken by you to resolve that, but I hope the following will allow you to consider whether there is any merit in that course of action.

 

Firstly, I understand that you entered a plea when you received your Summons but I shall explain fully for the benefit of others, who may not have done so or, may consider not doing so in the future.

 

IT IS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO ADD THAT I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT ANYONE SHOULD EVER PLEAD 'GUILTY' FOR SIMPLE EXPEDIENCY.

 

IF YOU GENUINELY DO NOT BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING WRONG, THEN THE CORRECT PLEA IS 'NOT GUILTY'

 

If it helps, I can explain that there are two most common charges in these sort of cases (although there are others) and I will also explain the way that the Court will usually calculate the fine imposed.

 

The first charge is a strict liability offence of 'being without a ticket in breach of Railways Byelaws'. If you plead guilty or, if you are convicted of this offence, this will attract a fine on scale 'A' of the guidelines given to the Magistrates

 

The second charge is that of 'intending to avoid paying a rail fare'. This is more serious and will attract a higher penalty on scale 'B' of the guidelines table.

 

The penalty for conviction of this offence is known as a 'Level 3' fine and this attracts a maximum penalty of up to £1000 or, in very serious cases the Magistrates may even consider a term of imprisonment.

 

If you do not send a plea or, reply to the summons, you may be convicted in your absence.

 

If you do not send the Court a completed statement of your earnings along with any plea form, the Magistrates are advised to assume a weekly average earnings of £350.

 

If you are convicted of the Byelaw offence and have not answered the Summons from Court or, not sent a completed means form this will usually result in a fine of around £175 and you may also be ordered to pay the full costs claimed by the prosecutor, plus the unpaid fare, plus the £15.00 'Victim Surcharge' introduced by the government in 2007. This surcharge must now be paid by everyone convicted and fined in the Magistrates Courts.

 

If you are convicted of the more serious charge of 'intending to avoid a fare' and the scenario is the same in that you have not entered a plea or, you have not sent advice of your means to the Court then the fine for a first conviction will usually be around £350 plus all the other costs / fare / surcharges as before.

 

If you were charged with the more serious offence, but did enter a guilty plea and a statement of means, the Magistrates will have taken that into consideration and will have reduced the fine and may have reduced the costs award to the prosecutor accordingly. The costs claim by the prosecutor will often be around £100 or more and the Magistrates may order all or part of this to be paid by you.

 

This means that based on the current guidelines the average if a person is convicted in their absence of 'intending not to pay' and has not sent a statement of means in answer the Summons is likely to total up as follows:

 

£350 fine + £100 costs + £15 surcharge + £3 fare = £468.00.

 

It would appear that you have been given a reduced fine in recognition of a 'guilty' plea and it seems that you have also been ordered to pay the prosecution costs application, compensation of the unpaid fare and the standard victim surcharge.

 

Please note, the figures given throughout this explanation are based on my regular recent experience, but may be varied by the Magistrates as it must be stressed, the charts that are used are described as guidelines.

 

Hope that helps and I am happy to help with any further query if I can.

Edited March 22, 2009 by Old-CodJA

[Old-CodJA]

Sorry it's perhaps not what you wanted to hear, but I should have added to the long message above.

 

The amount that you have been ordered to pay by the Court is due by 30th March as they specify.

 

If you do not intend to appeal the sentence and are going to make payment that should now be paid in full, but if this payment will cause you immediate hardship or difficulty, you should contact the 'Fines Officer' at the Court where your case was heard without delay.

 

The address will be on the papers that you have received, and you should explain the difficulty and ask for time to pay.

 

The Fines Officer will be able to set up a repayment plan by manageable instalments, which you must keep to until it is cleared.

 

If you have difficulty in making any instalment then you must again contact the Fines Officer to request any variation.

[Guest mc661]

..... in very serious cases the Magistrates may even consider 3 months imprisonment.

 

I thought the CJA 2003 amended this to be up to 51 weeks.

 

SCHEDULE 26

Increase in maximum term for certain summary offences

Regulation of Railways Act 1889 (c. 57)

 

3 In section 5 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 (avoiding payment of fares, etc.), in subsection (3), for “three months” there is substituted “51 weeks”.

 

The Crossrail Act 2008 has also increased the previous level 1 fines to level 2's and 3's.

[Old-CodJA]

Yes, you're right.

 

I've been writing '3 months' for so long that came out in the flow of typing and I should probably have simply said 'may consider imprisonment'. I have edited accordingly.

 

Nonetheless, the likelihood of any custodial sentence is so rare as to be irrelevant in respect of a first offence case and I did mention the level 3 fine.

[Guest mc661]

Must agree with you there.

I have only known one person get put inside for fare evasion and then they only got a month in lieu of payment of the fine. They also had around 15-20 previous for fare evasion as well.

[Old-CodJA]

Must agree with you there.

I have only known one person get put inside for fare evasion and then they only got a month in lieu of payment of the fine. They also had around 15-20 previous for fare evasion as well.

 

I know of two in the past 30 years, but like you say there were very serious aggravating factors and more recently I've been involved with two that have received community service sentences.

 

As a sentence it's almost as rare as rocking horse manure and not worth worrying anyone with really, but it's there as a final sanction.

[blazer666_uk]

I know of 5 people who have been imprisoned for rail offences in the last 3 years, my company has helped to convict 2 of these habitual offenders.

[Old-CodJA]

I know of 5 people who have been imprisoned for rail offences in the last 3 years, my company has helped to convict 2 of these habitual offenders.

 

 

Transgressors may quite often be imprisoned following conviction for 'rail offences' as you put it, but not specifically for fare evasion.

 

This really should be kept in context and not confused with the whole host of more serious offences that might lead to loss of liberty if caught and convicted. I speak from experience of being directly involved in this field every working day.

 

In 99.9% of cases, fines incurred at a level or, higher than that experienced by the OP will be imposed and if the matter has serious enough aggravating factors, such as a record of a number of previous convictions for the same offence, community service will be considered first with imprisonment as a final sanction in a minute number of cases.

 

It must be remembered that the loss of liberty option can only be considered by the court in those cases where someone has been charged with the intention of avoiding a fare.

 

A very high percentage of the cases brought before the Magistrates are for railway byelaw offences and imprisonment is not an option that is available to the court in these cases.

[SRPO]

Very much depends on which court you go to, there are sentencing guidelines which should be followed however some magistrates/DJs do whatever they want.

Your figure is very much the average, must be quite a shock to fare dodgers expecting a £20 fine through the door

[Seminole]

Are there any circumstances in which it is permissable to get on a train without paying? I'm thinking of instances in which the ticket office is shut when it should have been open and the ticket machine simply isn't working. What is the customer supposed to do in this situation- get on a bus to another station?

[SRPO]

Are there any circumstances in which it is permissable to get on a train without paying? I'm thinking of instances in which the ticket office is shut when it should have been open and the ticket machine simply isn't working. What is the customer supposed to do in this situation- get on a bus to another station?

 

If there are no facilities to buy a ticket at the station then you may buy one at the first available opportunity, which is on the train from the conductor or at the next interchange or destination station, which ever comes first.

'No facilities' does not mean: there was a queue, you were in a rush, your torn,wrinkled bank note wasnt accepted by the machine or your credit/debit/cash card wasnt accepted.

 

The law, although strict, is very fair on this issue, if you couldnt buy one you dont commit an offence, if you could, you do.

[Seminole]

If there are no facilities to buy a ticket at the station then you may buy one at the first available opportunity, which is on the train from the conductor or at the next interchange or destination station, which ever comes first.

'No facilities' does not mean: there was a queue, you were in a rush, your torn,wrinkled bank note wasnt accepted by the machine or your credit/debit/cash card wasnt accepted.

 

The law, although strict, is very fair on this issue, if you couldnt buy one you dont commit an offence, if you could, you do.

 

That seems reasonable. What about the (all too common situation in my area) where the ticket machine isn't working and there is consequently an extra long queue at the ticket office. The customer turns up at his usual time to buy a ticket but is in danger of missing his normal train because the train company hasn't provided its normal level of resource for ticket buying.

[Old-CodJA]

That seems reasonable. What about the (all too common situation in my area) where the ticket machine isn't working and there is consequently an extra long queue at the ticket office. The customer turns up at his usual time to buy a ticket but is in danger of missing his normal train because the train company hasn't provided its normal level of resource for ticket buying.

 

Unfortunately, the answer to that one isn't perhaps quite what some people would hope for.

 

If there are facilities to buy a ticket, the intending traveller has an obligation to do so before boarding any train.

 

If the station that you are referring to is in an area where Penalty Fares apply and you board the train without a ticket, it is likely that the revenue staff would issue a penalty fare notice at the very least. If this happens, you should insist on paying the fare that you would normally have paid and seeing that entered on the penalty notice with the balance of the penalty shown as outstanding. The traveller then has 21 days to appeal. If you can then show that it the wait to buy a ticket was so unreasonable as to mean that you would have suffered an unnecessarily long delay it is likely that your appeal would be successful.

 

Remember that if you normally pay by debit card it is quite possible that the on-train staff will not be able to accept that in some areas. that is because they may not have means of checking credit electronically when on the train and the card issuer insits that is done with things like Solo, Visa Electon etc. so it is always advisable to carry sufficient cash to cover your fare.

 

Under Railways Byelaw 18 there is a strict liability requirement to hold a valid ticket if there was means to get one at the station. Anyone who fails to abide by that requirement may find themselves facing prosecution.

 

These days rail staff are promptly made aware of those stations where there is a problem with a machine or, a booking office is closed. Computer monitoring of ticket machines and mobile phones and pagers keep revenue staff informed, so it's no good claiming that a machine wasn't working or, the office was closed if it wasn't. CCTV covers virtually all locations too.

 

If there genuinely is a problem, most rail staff will be sympathetic, but as SRPO said in an earlier thread, 'attitude' has a lot of effect on the end result for both sides.

[Seminole]

To be fair, I've never had a problem buying a ticket at Waterloo in that situation so I guess the comms system works quite well.

 

Having said that the whole penalty fares prosecution system seems antiquated and dates back to the days of state ownership.

[SRPO]

To be fair, I've never had a problem buying a ticket at Waterloo in that situation so I guess the comms system works quite well.

 

Having said that the whole penalty fares prosecution system seems antiquated and dates back to the days of state ownership.

 

I would like to see the penalty fare scheme done away with too, unfortunately it would mean having staff at every station from start of service till end & inspectors checking trains very frequently.

This is an expensive option but would mean that the evaders would be either caught or prevented from joining the service.

The problem lies with deciding if the travelling public would be prepared to cover that expense.....

[Old-CodJA]

Well, whilst it does date back to 'state ownership', the penalty fares legislation is relatively new and certainly a lot less 'antiquated' than the Regulation of Railways Act 1889, which is the usual legislation referred to when passengers are prosecuted for intending to avoid a fare.

 

The first Penalty Fares (Railways) legislation dates from the early 1980s and was partly introduced to deal with the growing problem of persistent non-payment of the relatively small, one-stop fares within the old Network SouthEast area of British Rail. I was one of the many Travelling Ticket Inspectors that became Revenue Protection Inspectors involved at the time of that introduction

 

In some areas, as the process of slimming down the workforce and disappearance of ticket barrier staff and the closure of some booking offices continued, more and more passengers simply didn't buy tickets despite the proliferation of self-service facilities. Prior to this the Railways had always had to 'staff for the peaks' and had ticket collectors at almost every station exit. This is clearly a particularly wasteful and costly practice that cannot be sustained in todays world.

 

The more frequent prosecution of the strict liability, breach of Byelaw offence is a relatively new occurence by comparison although some have always been prosecuted under this legislation.

 

Revised and updated in 2005, The Railways Byelaws are still a particularly powerful legislation.

Edited April 10, 2009 by Old-CodJA