A Travelcard that isn't a Travelcard...

[Tetchytyke]

A Penalty Fare is not a strict liability criminal offence, it's just an additional fee that a TOC charges if you don't have a ticket.

The Railway Byelaws, amended as recently as 2005, are very much strict liability criminal offences.

 

[Flamingo]

Anybody is free to go to court if they feel they have been incorrectly treated.

Parliment decided over 150 years ago that failure to pay for a rail journey is a criminal offence and can be prosecuted through the courts. This has been refined and reviewed by parliment regularly, these laws are not Victorian relics.

A lot of people on here get confused between a "Customer Service" matter and a "Breach of bylaws" matter, and seem to think that Passenger Focus can have some impact on criminal law, as opposed to customer complaints.

As has been said before on this thread, no passenger can be forced to accept a Penalty Fare or out of court settlement. They can always proceed to court if they feel their mitigation is that good. Most do not, one would assume on legal advice of some sort.

The TOC's are obliged to protect their revenue, and if anybody is unhappy at the powers Parliment have given them, then get on to your MP about it, that's who changes the law.

But while drafting the indignant letter demanding the money-grabbing TOC's get their come-uppance, come up with some solutions for protecting revenue as well, as what most people who do not work in the industry will not recognise, is that there are a significant number of people (of all classes, social backgrounds and ethnic groups) who will not buy a ticket without fear of consequences if they don't.

I see them day in day out. Very very few of them (I can count on one hand after eight years the one's I have personally been involved with) end up in court.

 

[martybabes]

Anybody is free to go to court if they feel they have been incorrectly treated.

As has been said before on this thread, no passenger can be forced to accept a Penalty Fare or out of court settlement. They can always proceed to court if they feel their mitigation is that good. Most do not, one would assume on legal advice of some sort.

They will most likely go to court if their defence is good! Mitigation is for when they plead guilty, in which case they should really have accepted a penalty fare much earlier.

 

[Flamingo]

In my experience, what passengers feel is a defence ("I was running late', "I left my Railcard in my other purse", "Nobody told me the ticket wasn't valid for any train") is really mitigation...

 

[swt_passenger]

The Railway Byelaws, amended as recently as 2005, are very much strict liability criminal offences.

But as you point out they weren't new in 2005, just consolidated into a nationally agreed standard set. I think in retrospect a wrong decision had been made at privatisation, in that they thought each TOC needed its own byelaws, but those individual versions had already replaced the BR Byelaws which I think dated from 1962?

Were those relatively short lived individual TOC bylaws significantly different to those of BR? Is there any evidence at all the 2005 version was intended as a money making scheme for private companies - or was it just an administrative update?

 

[Flamingo]

They are not individual TOC bylaws (and never were), and the purpose of them is not to maximise profits for TOC's, but to ensure there is a way to legally proceed against passengers avoiding paying the fare due for the journey on what is still a taxpayer subsidised national transport network.

 

[swt_passenger]

They are not individual TOC bylaws (and never were),

Sorry, but there definitely were individual 'per TOC' Byelaws up to 2005. Have a look at page 22/23 of the 2005 version of the Byelaws on DfT's site here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/4202/railway-byelaws.pdf

...where it lists all the previous superseded bylaws, with the relevant dates they were last 'made', normally around 1999/2000.

 

[Flamingo]

Were they related to fare issues? (unable to open link at athe moment).

 

[Mojo]

Every Toc used to have its own set of byelaws, but they were all fundamentally the same.

There was one point in the not too distant past at which the byelaw for travelling without a ticket was made an offence for which you could be prosecuted (and fined). Reading back to the 1960s BR Byelaws this was an offence, but only one for which they could insist on your removal from the railway.

 

[swt_passenger]

Every Toc used to have its own set of byelaws, but they were all fundamentally the same.

That's basically what I remember, I expect the purpose was mainly to allow unique correspondence addresses and stuff like that to be included. Pity there are no examples easily reachable online to check.

What I was aiming to point out is that the 2005 edition of national bylaws didn't fundamentally change anything.

 

[Flamingo]

Which is also my point. It's not something new since privatisation.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Every Toc used to have its own set of byelaws, but they were all fundamentally the same.

Yes, that's correct. I think that the reason for that multiplicity of identical Byelaws depends on the point of view: either it is a consequence of the rushed attempt to privatise the industry without the necessary legislative framework having been established, or, the unnecessarily slow pace of legal advisers and government.

There was one point in the not too distant past at which the byelaw for travelling without a ticket was made an offence for which you could be prosecuted (and fined). Reading back to the 1960s BR Byelaws this was an offence, but only one for which they could insist on your removal from the railway.

Yes, even the 1986 version of the Byelaws provided [Byelaw 3 "Ticket Requirements"] that any person passing a ticket barrier who is unable to produce a valid ticket on demand, and, a person entering a train without a valid ticket, may only "be removed".

BUT, Byelaw 5 "Avoidance of Fares" did impose a penalty of £50. This appled to the use of tickets which were cheaper to more distant stations than to an intermediate station where the passenger alighted (and attempting to avoid paying the full fare by 'stopping short' - still a very hotly debated practice).

These Byelaws were changed to their current equivalents in 2002, and the 'stopping short' offence is no longer specifically referred to in the Byelaws, and has reverted to, either, a Contractural matter under which the ticket Conditions may render it invalid for the shorter journey, or, a statutory Offence under the Regulation of Railways Act.