Northern Rail magistrates court

Stigy

Livingthedream wrote: »

Your been taken to court for £1.90 :eek: unbelievable, what a waste of Northern Rail's money and the Magistrates time, I can't believe that they haven't tried to settle this out of court or have I missed this point.

I hope when you go to court the Magistrate finds in your favour and throws a wobbler at Northern Rail.

Please could you also post this thread on this Website, it's the Rail UK Forum, they will give you a lot more help.

In my experience most fares evaded deliberately are small ones (£1.90 and £2.00 jobbies). I have personally reported numerous amounts such as this for consideration of prosecution, probably amounting to thousands of pounds if added up! It's up to the OP to offer to settle, not the TOC, as this could be seen as extortion I suppose.

Livingthedream

Stigy wrote: »

Assuming you are being charged with a Byelaw offence (18.1 in this case), this is a strict liability matter and no inention to defraud the railway is required. If being charged under S.5.3(a) of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 then intention to defraud has to be reasonably proved for it to stand.

Hi Stigy, I think you could be right, this is more that an unpaid UFN for £1.90, hopefully, the OP will come back and tell us what the court appearance is for, as stated on his court summons.

Posting at the same time, you've got to love MSE for the ability to do that but;

Stigy wrote: »

In my experience most fares evaded deliberately are small ones (£1.90 and £2.00 jobbies). I have personally reported numerous amounts such as this for consideration of prosecution, probably amounting to thousands of pounds if added up! It's up to the OP to offer to settle, not the TOC, as this could be seen as extortion I suppose.

Doesn't the 'Notice of intent to prosecute letter' have a nice little leading statement of ' if your have difficult paying this penalty or if you would like to discuss your options then please phone ............' which is the Train Companies way of trying to keep this out of court by putting the idea into your head.

richyrichuk

Stigy wrote: »

I think this thread needs to be moved ideally, out of the parking tickets board, which is why I enquired about the alleged offence. Mods?


If you didn't receive a summonse, how did you hear about the impending court action? Assuming you are being charged with a Byelaw offence (18.1 in this case), this is a strict liability matter and no inention to defraud the railway is required. If being charged under S.5.3(a) of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 then intention to defraud has to be reasonably proved for it to stand. It depends on how thye Magistrates see Railway Companies as to how they find you (guilty or not guilty) a lot of the time I'm afraid, although for strict liability matters such as this one, I think you might need to use the fact that you have dyslexia to get out of this one, otherwise you're just another passenger who might or might not have made a mistake.

It would help if you could tell us how you were dealt with and what questions were asked, and whether or not said questions were asked under caution or not. If for example you decided to alight at this station and made no attempt to cross the station and return from the direction you just came from, then one might look at that as you actually intending to go to this station. Things like this dictate what the charge might be, too, for example, who's to say you didn't pick that ticket up of the floor and you had no intention of paying for your rail journey? Little things like this should have been bottomed out during questioning, and you'll by no know what the charge is as it'll be on correspondence.

yes yes very much so part of my argument is, well correct details given so i wasnt trying to deceive, and i did explain my situation to the guard who took no notice of a honest mistake, but again like you say, i was in the wrong which i will admit to, just trying to get get them to possibly see the other side of things.

Livingthedream wrote: »

Your been taken to court for £1.90 unbelievable, what a waste of Northern Rail's money and the Magistrates time, I can't believe that they haven't tried to settle this out of court or have I missed this point.

I hope when you go to court the Magistrate finds in your favour and throws a wobbler at Northern Rail.

Please could you also post this thread on this Website, it's the Rail UK Forum, they will give you a lot more help.

thanks for the link, i will try. and well they sent a summons but i had moved and then got convicted, i signed an affidavit to over turn it. and now its down to this.

and yes a waste of everybody's money

Stigy wrote: »

In my experience most fares evaded deliberately are small ones (£1.90 and £2.00 jobbies). I have personally reported numerous amounts such as this for consideration of prosecution, probably amounting to thousands of pounds if added up! It's up to the OP to offer to settle, not the TOC, as this could be seen as extortion I suppose.

yeah i suppose thats what they are trying to do, 'we will prosecute for any amount of money owed' which technically is fair enough, but still dam silly.

Stigy

Livingthedream wrote: »

Hi Stigy, I think you could be right, this is more that an unpaid UFN for £1.90, hopefully, the OP will come back and tell us what the court appearance is for, as stated on his court summons.

Posting at the same time, you've got to love MSE for the ability to do that but;



Doesn't the 'Notice of intent to prosecute letter' have a nice little leading statement of ' if your have difficult paying this penalty or if you would like to discuss your options then please phone ............' which is the Train Companies way of trying to keep this out of court by putting the idea into your head.

Hi Ltd, hope all is well!

If Rich was reported for the offence, then there's more than likely going to be no mention of an administrative Penalty on the letter. If it's an unpaid Penalty Fare, then it's a possibility, but not on standard letter as no penalty has been imposed. If the alleged offender wished to settle out of court and admitted their wrongdoing, they should contact the TOC on first receipt of their letter and express how sorry theu are and offer to meet all reasonable admin costs to save the matter from going to court. The TOC is in no way obliged to accept of course, but at least you canm say you tried! (I should really copy/paste these responses, lol).

Rich wrote:

yeah i suppose thats what they are trying to do, 'we will prosecute for any amount of money owed' which technically is fair enough, but still dam silly.

At least with a train fare there's an amount owed! Think about other Byelaws, whereby there's no direct loss from the rail company! I've seen Magistrates give fare evasion a hard time, but when there's no loss in revenue, it's harder still! I think alot of people say "It's only £1.90, can't be that bad can it?", but other strict liability offences, non-railway, are just accepted (such as speeding for example). The only difference is when people start mentioning small amounts of money owed and they see it as petty. Lok at the bigger picture, and you'll see what I mean! :A

It's worth taking in to account that the TOC doesn't really gain financially from all of this, although some TOCs tend to inflate their costs somewhat, lol. Either way, they only really stand to gain their train fare back, the rest goes to the Government, with £15 going to the victims of crime charity. PFs are often the best way to go where they apply, but even then they certainly don't get all £20 as most believe they do!

richyrichuk

thanks for all the comments and advice, just to go back to one of the points, who/what/when can be done about the court location? if anything.

Livingthedream

The OP has now opened a thread on the RailUK forum, it make an interesting read with many unanswered questions on the legitimacy of Northern Rail's approach of taking this to court.

Coupon-mad

Just to add that if the OP's dyslexia is severe, such that it affects normal day-to-day activities, then he is covered by the good old Equality Act 2010.

If so, then the OP would do well to take proof of the severity of the dyslexia (Doctor's letter etc) to Court with him and point out that failure to make any reasonable adjustment to 'normal procedures' and harassing people with a disability, is against the law.