Latest news with #penaltyfare
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Commuters who appeal penalty fares risk criminal record
SCHEDULE FOR 6.30AM LIVE PRIORITY TAG Commuters who challenge train ticket inspectors now risk getting a criminal record, The Telegraph can reveal. Passengers who are handed penalty fares for making mistakes when buying their tickets can now be prosecuted as criminals if their appeals against those penalties are rejected. Rules have changed thanks to a judgment made by the Chief Magistrate earlier this year, the existence of which The Telegraph is revealing now. Penalty fares are given to train passengers who cannot produce a valid ticket when asked by an inspector. The rule change, likely to affect tens of millions of journeys per year, comes after the Office of Rail and Road warned train companies last week to stop punishing people who make 'seemingly unintentional or minor transgressions of fares and ticketing rules'. Public concern about fare-dodging has reached a high point after Robert Jenrick, the Conservative shadow justice secretary, was filmed challenging miscreants in London. Credit: X/@RobertJenrick Yet those who formally dispute an inspector's view of the notoriously complex web of British train ticketing rules could now find themselves with a criminal record if they stand up for what they believe is right. Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring said in a written ruling dated February 21, which has not previously been published: 'I rule that criminal prosecutions can be brought following a penalty fare appeal being dismissed…' The judge said he had been given 'an undertaking that all [Department for Transport Train Operating Companies] will follow the guidance given by the court'. Fines of up to £1,000 and, for repeat offenders, prison sentences of up to three months can result from a conviction for failing to produce a ticket or travelling with intent to avoid payment. A conviction under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 will appear on DBS background checks, potentially affecting someone's job prospects. Campaigners fear that Judge Goldspring's ruling has given train companies a green light to threaten honest but mistaken commuters with a criminal record as the price of challenging ticket inspectors. Christian Waters, 47, of Leeds, who was targeted for prosecution in 2022 after having his penalty fare appeal rejected, said: 'Why was this ruling not published, given it affects the protection that hundreds of thousands of passengers would assume they had from the regulations? Mr Waters, whose case was dropped after he realised that Government-owned rail company Northern had broken the rules by trying to haul him in front of a judge, said: 'I do feel like they are saying I got off on a technicality now. I still dispute that I did anything wrong; their machine was not working!' 'No one has any protection at all, a sham of an appeal system and then money [is] demanded backed up by criminal law,' he continued. Westminster magistrates' court's unpublicised ruling came about after another Government-owned train company, Southeastern, asked the court if a number of previous prosecutions it brought were lawful. The exact number was not revealed in the judgment. 'It is clearly irrational that a person who brought an unmeritorious appeal could not be prosecuted, whereas someone who did not appeal could be,' ruled Judge Goldspring. While an out-of-court appeals process exists for penalty fares, Parliament never intended for commuters to be criminalised when it created the scheme some 35 years ago. Introducing the 1988 law that created penalty fares, Tory peer Lord Marshall of Leeds told Parliament: 'If, however, a passenger on a train is not in possession of a ticket, he is not to be treated as a criminal under this Bill. He is simply asked to pay a penalty fare, which is a civil penalty and not a criminal one.' Today, Regulation 11(3) of the Railways (Penalty Fares) Regulations 2018 says that prosecution is only allowed where the penalty has been cancelled by the train company before the appeal panel has decided the outcome. Yet in his February 2025 ruling, Judge Goldspring said: 'The prosecutor obviously should not bring a prosecution if it is excluded,' but added: 'There is no obligation on the court to investigate whether the defendant has a defence.' Penalty fare appeals are decided on by a private company called Appeal Services, which is a contractor paid by train companies to decide penalty fare appeals. According to Appeal Services' website, in the last 28 days, its assessors rejected 80 per cent of first-stage appeals. Southeastern and the Department for Transport were contacted for comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Moment 'fare dodger' is warned he could be committing fraud after only paying for short part of his journey
This is the moment a train passenger was caught travelling on a discounted ticket without his money-saving railcard - before being reported for suspected fraud. The man was stopped by a revenue protection officer at the barriers at London Waterloo station after arriving on a South Western Railway (SWR) service. He had bought the ticket with a railcard discount but failed to present the card, meaning he faced a penalty fare of £100 plus the price of the full single fare. But the officer became suspicious when he found that the ticket from Vauxhall to Waterloo had been bought only 20 minutes earlier, and not scanned at Vauxhall. When the passenger provided his identity details and address, the officer noted that he lived in Sunbury-on-Thames, much further down the SWR line in Surrey. This meant the officer suspected that the man may have been attempting a 'short fare', which is where passengers only buy a ticket for part of your journey. Commuters on SWR often travel into London from much further afield but buy an e-ticket from a stop near Waterloo such as Vauxhall for a cheaper fare. This means they can try to go through the barriers at Waterloo and avoid paying for the full journey. The incident is the latest to feature in the popular Channel 5 programme Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law, which is airing on Monday nights at 9pm. It saw officer Jack challenge the passenger who arrived at Waterloo on a ticket from Vauxhall, telling him: 'We're checking for railcards'. The man tells Jack: 'Railcard? I don't have the railcard on me. Do I need to buy another ticket then? 'I know that if you go on the website, it can show you that you've got a railcard – does that make sense - because it's a physical one not a digital one.' But when Jack starts looking into the ticket more closely, he discovers it was bought about 20 minutes earlier and was not scanned at Vauxhall. The passenger says: 'I realised I was coming here because I was meeting my girlfriend or whatever. I live round Vauxhall.' Jack then asks the man for his details, which he provides, but his address is listed as Sunbury - not Vauxhall. Jack tells him: 'I'm going to be very blunt and very honest with you. Your address is in Sunbury, your ticket hasn't been scanned in at Vauxhall. When I report this about the railcard, they're going to investigate the ticket as part of that.' The passenger is then told that if it is found he travelled from elsewhere, he could be handed a more expensive penalty. He simply replies: 'Perfect, yeah, cheers.' And in a sign he has been through the process before, the man adds: 'They normally take quite long with this though, don't they? Takes a couple of weeks.' Asked by the officer again whether he travelled from Sunbury, the man says: 'No, no, I travelled from Vauxhall.' Jack then reports him to the fraud team, telling the programme: 'This person in particular hasn't scanned in his QR at Vauxhall. Bought it 20 minutes ago which indicates to me he may have travelled from further. 'So the railcard that he did put on the ticket, he wasn't carrying with him, so we've reported him under that fact, and then we're going to ask the fraud team to investigate the rest of it.' The case is then sent to SWR's fraud department for further investigation, with the man facing prosecution if he had not been truthful about where he travelled from. MailOnline has covered a series of incidents featured in the Channel 5 documentary, which comes as Robert Jenrick highlighted fare dodging another London station. The shadow justice secretary posted a video on social media last Thursday in which he confronted people who forced their way through the ticket barriers at Stratford. He asked one person 'do you think it's alright not to pay' and challenged another to 'go back through the barrier and pay'. At the top of an escalator he said to one person 'do you want to go back and pay like everybody else'? Mr Jenrick later told the BBC that he wants authorities to 'step up' and 'reassert these basic rules', adding that he wants transport bodies to understand 'that these things are not small rule breaks', and said he was 'unapologetic' about sharing the clip. But the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association union said the video was 'not only inappropriate but also potentially dangerous for passengers, staff and the individual involved'. Further incidents featured in the Channel 5 show have included passengers trying to push through barriers to avoid having to touch in or out. Others resort to violence if they are caught, with shocking videos filmed at stations showing passengers attacking police officers or punching security guards. Some try doing 'doughnut tickets', which is where you buy a short ticket for the first part of the journey, to scan the QR code on your entry barrier; and then another short ticket for the last section, to scan out at your destination station. This can lead to a much cheaper fare because you do not pay for the lengthier middle section of the trip - meaning there is a hole in the journey, hence the 'doughnut'. Separately, a report released on Wednesday found fare evasion is becoming 'normalised', with train staff telling the inquiry that they are struggling to cope with 'aggressive' passengers who refuse to buy tickets. Travellers are using 'a range of techniques to persistently' underpay or avoid paying and see it as a 'victimless crime ', according to the Office of Road and Rail (ORR). Staff enduring abusive behaviour when asking fare-dodgers to present their tickets are warning that evasion is becoming 'increasingly more challenging to tackle'. The report had been commissioned to look at concerns some passengers were being unfairly prosecuted by train operators over genuine mistakes when buying tickets. But it found fare evasion is a mounting problem now costing taxpayers £400million a year which is resulting in higher fares and less investment cash to improve services. Meanwhile TikTok influencers are brazenly showing Tube passengers how to illegally travel for free by 'bumping' through the station ticket barriers. Young men are filming themselves laughing and joking with each other as they push through the wide-aisle gates in videos liked by hundreds of thousands of viewers. The gates, which were first installed in 2008 at a cost of £12million, are normally used by wheelchair users, older people, parents with children and travellers with luggage. But they are increasingly being used by fare dodgers who either push through the gap in the middle, or quickly follow someone in front of them who touches out. 'Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law' is on Channel 5 on Monday evenings at 9pm
