Hi All, I also have a similar issue and was hoping for some advice. My girlfriend has been told by thameslink that they are looking to move forward with a case and she will receive a summons to attend the mags court.
To keep it short I was off work for a few weeks and have a Monthly travel card in my name. She used my travel for probably 5-10 days maximum. We didn’t realise it would be fraud and there was no intent to defraud the railway. We made this very clear in our response to the origanal letter but it seems that isn’t enough for them. It is her first time to ever commit an offence and didn’t actually know she was doing something wrong. She approached the officers at the station with the ticket to let her through as it didn’t go through the barriers and that was the first she knew it was not allowed.
Any recommendations on how we should proceed? Try and contact them to arrange a settlement or actually go to court and state what happened and be honest. I just want to keep the costs down
The most likely law under which such an incident might be prosecuted would be
Section 5(3)(a) of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889. This makes it an offence to travel, or attempt to travel, on the railway without previously having paid your fare, if you intend to avoid payment of the correct fare. In the case of your partner, the first element is clearly made out (as she did not hold a valid ticket), but it is the second (intent to avoid payment, aka 'dishonesty') that may be in question.
Unfortunately, whilst your partner's intentions may have been honest, I don't think the average passenger on the Clapham omnibus would think that a season ticket specifically issued to 'MR(S) A N OTHER' would be valid for anyone else to use it. In fact, I would have thought that an average person would understand that season tickets are generally not transferable.
As such, your partner would be needing to displace a reasonable default position that she did indeed intend to avoid payment of the correct fare by using a season ticket not issued to her. That could be quite a difficult task, in particular in view of how the Courts have interpreted the meaning of 'intent to avoid payment' - as they obviously don't necessarily take what people say at face value, and instead draw out inferences from peoples' behaviour.
It may yet be possible to settle this matter out of Court by means of an administrative settlement, but in a case such as this, Court may be unavoidable depending on the policy and attitude of the rail company.
Typically, an out of Court settlement would involve payment of any fare(s) outstanding (you will no doubt be able to calculate how much this is), in addition to the rail company's costs of investigating the matter (typically in the order of anywhere between £80 and £250, for a one-off incident such as this).
If your partner were taken to Court and prosecuted under the above-mentioned Act, the penalty would likely be a fine of between 75-150% of her weekly income, in addition to the prosecution's costs (see above), as well as a compensatory order of the fare(s) outstanding and the victim surcharge. A conviction for this offence would result in a criminal record, and would be considered unspent (and thus declarable for job applications, insurance etc.) for one year after conviction.
There is an alternative offence that is the other main offence which is prosecuted in irregularities such as this - Byelaw 18 of the
Railway Byelaws 2005. This creates an offence which is committed when a person boards a train without a valid ticket on them (i.e. intent to avoid payment, or dishonesty, need not be proven). This carries the same financial penalties as a Regulation of Railways Act offence upon conviction, however there is no associated criminal record which must be declared.
In a case such as this it seems quite unlikely that prosecution under the more serious offence would not at least be considered, however Thameslink might only try for a Byelaws prosecution if they are lacking in terms of their evidence or don't want to take on the risk of having to prove intent (and potentially losing on that point) for a Regulation of Railways prosecution.
Unfortunately it is unlikely there will be a cheap option out of this.
