Hello I was hopping to get some advice here as I’ve asked around with friends and family and can’t seem to find anyone in my situation I’m a 2nd year university student and around September 2023 i was caught with no train ticket I filled the form with my details and they said they were going to send me a letter about how to pay and the next steps I complexly forgot about this fine and didn’t receive any letters or anything recently around January of this year I evolved a letter of a fine totalling 1,400+ and I was confused to where it was from I did digging and found out they were sending the letters to my old address the whole time which I moved out of in 2021. I was hoping to get some advice on what to do as I have a statutory declaration hearing as that’s what I read online was the best step since I didn’t get any letters regarding this fine resulting it it becoming such an absurd amount
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Statutory declaration hearing
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Fawkes Cat
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Welcome to the forum!
If you have a 'statutory declaration hearing' then that sounds as if you're going to court to make the statutory declaration. My understanding is that if you do this, then the court is entitled to ask you to plead immediately - which on the basis of what you have told us would mean pleading 'guilty'.
That means that you will be convicted of the offence and the court will go on to work out the punishment you should face. That doesn't sound brilliant, but is better news than where you are now in that the punishment will be a fine - but the fine will be recalculated on your current income (which is unlikely to be much as you're a student), and the various costs which have been added to your bill for them trying to find you will come off for the moment. So not a perfect solution, but hopefully something that you will find possible to live with.
geoffkendall10
New Member
So you gave an address that you had not lived at for 2 years .
Why?
Why?
I presume this is a typo? As otherwise it would seem a little weird to have given them in 2023 an address you'd moved out from in 2021!
Puffing Devil
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Have a look at this post to see what will happen when you go to court: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/statutory-hearing-what-to-do-after.282719/
Hopefully your court date is some time away. As a matter of urgency you should contact the prosecution department of the train company that took you to court and:
If you don't hear from the TOC, you'll be in the position of the poster in the thread I linked above.
Hopefully your court date is some time away. As a matter of urgency you should contact the prosecution department of the train company that took you to court and:
- Explain that you have received no correspondence from them or the court about this matter
- Apologise and give them an up to date postal and email address
- Show contrition for travelling without a ticket - read the forum for the excellent format suggested by Hadders
If you don't hear from the TOC, you'll be in the position of the poster in the thread I linked above.
Hi I was reading other forums and I saw that it was possible to reopen the case with a statutory declaration and come to a conclusion with the train company in question which is EMR
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Hi sorry yes this was a typo I moved out of the address in 2022 and I gave them my current address but they still continued to send the letters to the address on my id which was the old address
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I was also hoping to resolve this issue without receiving a criminal record which I heard was the penalty for pleading guilty
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Sorry I made a typo I moved out 2022 I gave them my updated address but they asked to see my id which was a picture with my old address and I think a mistake was made on their part sending these letters to the old address instead of the updated one I told them in person
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A Statutory Declaration is a process that you can use to get a court case reopened where you were unaware of it and you weren't able to plead guilty or not guilty.
If the Statutory Declaration is accepted the case is re-heard and you can still be found guilty. What you want to do is get the case re-opened and once this has happened get the train company to offer you an out of court settlement where you pay them some money in return for them withdrawing the case from court.
You can make a Statutory Declaration at a Magistrates Court but the danger with doing this is they might hear the case immediately - and you don't want it heard immediately because that would mean you don't have time to engage with the train company about an out of court settlement.
Alternatively you can submit the Statutory Declaration at a solicitors office. If you do this there will be a delay in the case being heard (because a court case cannot be heard in a solicitors office!), which gives you time to engage with the train company.
If you do make the declaration at a court and they want to hear the case immediately then you should plead not guilty. This then means a trial would have to be arranged at a future date meaning you have time to engage with the train company.
It may be better to complete the stat dec at a solicitors. Most high street firms will do it if you just walk in, I think the going rate is still a fiver.
Importantly, engage with the train company involved now! You would need to tell them you're sorry and ask if they will consider settling out of court. Do you have contact details for their prosecution team from any of the correspondence you do have? If you don't, let us know which company it was and it's likely someone here will know.
Importantly, engage with the train company involved now! You would need to tell them you're sorry and ask if they will consider settling out of court. Do you have contact details for their prosecution team from any of the correspondence you do have? If you don't, let us know which company it was and it's likely someone here will know.
Hi I don’t have the contact details the company in question is East Midlands Railway
WesternLancer
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Is their address on any of the pages of the court papers/ SJPN you have?
Since you must engage with EMR in writing you need an address for their revenue protection team.
If you want to settle this then you're going to have to put some serious leg work in to find out EMR's contact details. You need their prosecutions department, not customer services. These sort of teams aren't easy to get hold of but if you persist you have a decent chance of getting a favourable outcome.
Searching this section of the forum for cases involving EMR is a good starting point.
WesternLancer
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I found the EMR penalty fare policy (so not the full revenue protection policy) and frustratingly the contact details in that is customer services. So I didn’t link that here.
My search wasn’t that thorough though
OP please note I do not believe you are dealing with a penalty fare. Your situation is more serious than that.
No there aren’t any addresses on the letters the letter was from the London collection centre
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Yeah I don’t think it’s a penalty fare as the fare was issued quite a while back now
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Hi I found this online but I don’t think this is it “You can write to EMR Customer Service Centre at: Locomotive House, Locomotive Way, Pride Park, Derby, DE24 8PU”
WesternLancer
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That address is their operational hq I think. Not sure if revenue protection team are there
@LowLevel may possibly know.
You're right it's not, maybe try searching this forum. If all else fails you could try calling EMR customer services and asking for an address for their prosecutions team, but not sure if they'd have or give you it.
WesternLancer
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Can you upload copies of all paperwork you have received with your personal details / case number blanked out?
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I got the first letter on the 6th of September 2024 and obviously since I had forgotten about the debt I didn’t know what it was for I then sent them the email in the second picture and the response was the third picture
Attachments
Hi what should I say to them
Complete the stat dec first, either through a solicitor (and give it to the court) or at the court.
Then contact EMR, tell them who you are and give them any case reference numbers you have. Explain you were not aware of the original hearing and have submitted a stat dec to that effect, apologise for what you did in 2023 and show remorse and ask if they would consider resolving the matter through an out of court settlement before it is heard again.
Spaceship323
Member
Will the court accept the stat.dec.?
As far as I'm aware you have 14 days from first learning of the case to lodge a stat.dec. The OP says they received the further steps notice in September (post #17) so they must have known they'd been taken to court
As far as I'm aware you have 14 days from first learning of the case to lodge a stat.dec. The OP says they received the further steps notice in September (post #17) so they must have known they'd been taken to court
I’ve got my stat dec hearing on the 19th this month
You normally have 21 days to log a Statutory Declaration after you first become aware of the issue.
WesternLancer
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Thanks. The op should clearly mark any messages/ letters ‘for the attention of the prosecutions officer - East Midlands Railway’
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So this may create a problem. Does it mean the court might not accept the Stat Dec?
Possibly. When did @hmfigs first become aware of the court conviction?
If it is longer than 21-days ago then the court doesn’t have to accept the declaration, unless there are compelling reasons to do so.
Perhaps one of our members more knowledgeable in this area can advise further.
From previous threads here it seems as if courts are sometimes responding to people contacting them saying they didn't know about proceedings against them by scheduling an appointment to make a statutory declaration at a time that's convenient to the court and its calendar, which could be some time after the initial contact. It wouldn't be appropriate to choose not to accept the declaration at the time chosen by the court, rather than by the defendant, if the defendant was making diligent attempts to figure out what was going on immediately after receiving the next steps notice.
It would make more sense for courts to tell defendants that they can make the declaration in front of a solicitor etc instead, but they don't seem to be doing that. And some courts are scheduling hearings to re-open a case in the interests of justice, which strikes me as even more wrong, but they get to decide what their administrative response is!
It would make more sense for courts to tell defendants that they can make the declaration in front of a solicitor etc instead, but they don't seem to be doing that. And some courts are scheduling hearings to re-open a case in the interests of justice, which strikes me as even more wrong, but they get to decide what their administrative response is!
WesternLancer
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I think we have had a good answer on this before from someone. I recall a well informed post. No idea of the thread however.
A late statutory declaration may be accepted if "it appears to the court that it was not reasonable to expect the accused to serve that statutory declaration within that period".
This is, from what I know, relatively generously interpreted.
I think you might be conflating two separate issues. You are correct to say that the overburdened courts system is sometimes inviting defendants to make SDs in court weeks or months hence. When a defendant then makes the SD out of time, it is clearly within the court's power to accept it as the court's schedule meant to defendant could not reasonably have made it any earlier. However, where a delay past the 21 days is caused by the defendant, whether that be by sticking the head in the sand after getting a notice of fine and collection order and then only starting to act when they get the further steps notice or otherwise, that may result in the court finding it has no jurisdiction to receive the statutory declaration.
The fact that the solicitor option incurs a fee is a potential reason not to do this. Potential for Daily Mail scandal of "innocent defendants have to PAY to lodge appeals because courts say they're TOO BUSY" etc.
If the court decides that the defendant's delay beyond 21 days in lodging their SD exceeds what is reasonable, the court has no power to accept the SD. If nevertheless the court considers that the interests of justice require that a case be reopened, the section 142 procedure is what it needs to use.
One final point not a response to anyone in particular – when lodging an SD against a conviction where the case was commenced by Single Justice Procedure Notice, the defendant must at the same time serve a response to the SJPN (section 16E (3) (d) MCA 1980). The submission is not complete without one. A response can include a plea of guilty with or without a wish to attend court, or a plea of not guilty/a wish for the case to be handled outside the SJP. Not including this response means the conditions of section 16E (3) have not been met and the proceedings where the defendant was convicted in absence will not be voided. This response is mandatory whether the SD is completed before a solicitor, a magistrate, or otherwise.
Yeah I logged my declaration a week after I received the letter but they only gave me a court date in February and I asked them to reschedule it to my university city and they did that for the 19th this month
I made multiple efforts to contact the court and they only responded when they gave me a court date the date was set in Bromley which I told them due to my university schedule and having lectures that day I wouldn’t be able to make and they then changed it to this month for the 19th in my university city