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Why purchase any rail tickets for travelling children who are below the age of criminal responsibility?

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ExToC

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Child fares start from age 5

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10. Therefore children <10 cannot be charged or arrested for offences including ticketless travel.

Now I don’t see anything legally, but have found the following “No train company will take responsibility for children travelling alone and will not allow any child under the age of 12 to travel without an adult aged 16 or over. If any child is found travelling alone then the British Transport Police will be called immediately”. (This raises a separate question of whether 11 might be a more sensible age for unaccompanied travel as how would someone in the first year of high school get there by train? but that is another question).

What it does indicate that we expect an accompanying adult (related or not) to be “responsible”. I get it if the adult lies (an obvious lie) and says a 9 year old is 4 – that may fall under false representation. But what if they and the child travel, the adult has an appropriate ticket, the 9 year old has no ticket and on being questioned, the adult makes no such false representation on the child's age but simply says “I have a valid ticket so I’m travelling lawfully, the child is 9 so whether they travelling lawfully or not is immaterial as they can’t be arrested or charged, and I am not criminally responsible for another person.

Wales sidesteps this issue https://tfw.wales/savings-and-offers/train-fares/children-go-free

Grateful for thoughts on this. Does it have the potential to undermine how we deal with under 10's and push us to the Welsh solution being rolled out to the rest of the network.
 
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Gloster

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Would it not be the case that, if a child is travelling with an adult, the adult is responsible for the child. If the child does not have a ticket, then that is seen as the adult’s responsibility and any sanctions could be applied to the adult.
 

Y Ddraig Coch

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Child fares start from age 5

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10. Therefore children <10 cannot be charged or arrested for offences including ticketless travel.

Now I don’t see anything legally, but have found the following “No train company will take responsibility for children travelling alone and will not allow any child under the age of 12 to travel without an adult aged 16 or over. If any child is found travelling alone then the British Transport Police will be called immediately”. (This raises a separate question of whether 11 might be a more sensible age for unaccompanied travel as how would someone in the first year of high school get there by train? but that is another question).

What it does indicate that we expect an accompanying adult (related or not) to be “responsible”. I get it if the adult lies (an obvious lie) and says a 9 year old is 4 – that may fall under false representation. But what if they and the child travel, the adult has an appropriate ticket, the 9 year old has no ticket and on being questioned, the adult makes no such false representation on the child's age but simply says “I have a valid ticket so I’m travelling lawfully, the child is 9 so whether they travelling lawfully or not is immaterial as they can’t be arrested or charged, and I am not criminally responsible for another person.

Wales sidesteps this issue https://tfw.wales/savings-and-offers/train-fares/children-go-free

Grateful for thoughts on this. Does it have the potential to undermine how we deal with under 10's and push us to the Welsh solution being rolled out to the rest of the network.

Not quite on topic but regarding the Wales scenario, the guards are quite often happy to sell you a child ticket even though they should travel free unless you actually mention it to them, ticket machines and TfW website also happy to charge for a child ticket with an adult ticket which really shouldn't happen.

A couple of times I have pulled up a guard selling child tickets when travelling with an adult with a ticket and "reminded" them of the rules. I think the commission is always in their minds so if not questioned are happy to sell child tickets.
 

Watershed

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Now I don’t see anything legally, but have found the following “No train company will take responsibility for children travelling alone and will not allow any child under the age of 12 to travel without an adult aged 16 or over. If any child is found travelling alone then the British Transport Police will be called immediately”. (This raises a separate question of whether 11 might be a more sensible age for unaccompanied travel as how would someone in the first year of high school get there by train? but that is another question).
That statement seems to be something that a random travel website has just made up. It's quite commonplace for 11 year olds to take the train to school on their own, indeed sometimes even children at the upper end of primary school will do so.

What it does indicate that we expect an accompanying adult (related or not) to be “responsible”. I get it if the adult lies (an obvious lie) and says a 9 year old is 4 – that may fall under false representation. But what if they and the child travel, the adult has an appropriate ticket, the 9 year old has no ticket and on being questioned, the adult makes no such false representation on the child's age but simply says “I have a valid ticket so I’m travelling lawfully, the child is 9 so whether they travelling lawfully or not is immaterial as they can’t be arrested or charged, and I am not criminally responsible for another person.
Just because the child is too young to be held criminally responsible, that does not make it the end of the matter. First of all, there is no minimum age limit on the power of railway staff or police officers to remove someone from the railway using reasonable force.

And if a dispute were to escalate, the police may get involved and issue a Local Child Curfew or a Child Safety Order, or the parents/guardians may be issued with a Parenting Order. In extreme circumstances, the local Youth Offending Team could take the child into custody.
 

Bletchleyite

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That statement seems to be something that a random travel website has just made up. It's quite commonplace for 11 year olds to take the train to school on their own, indeed sometimes even children at the upper end of primary school will do so

It's not made up. I believe GNER came up with it (which sort of makes sense, you don't want 8 year olds going to London on the ECML, but they might well go one stop on Merseyrail with their pushbike if a bit tired, and I sometimes did). They were however told to pack it in I believe.
 

deltic

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It's not made up. I believe GNER came up with it (which sort of makes sense, you don't want 8 year olds going to London on the ECML, but they might well go one stop on Merseyrail with their pushbike if a bit tired, and I sometimes did). They were however told to pack it in I believe.
I see the wording the OP quoted is still on the C2C website
 

miklcct

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It's not made up. I believe GNER came up with it (which sort of makes sense, you don't want 8 year olds going to London on the ECML, but they might well go one stop on Merseyrail with their pushbike if a bit tired, and I sometimes did). They were however told to pack it in I believe.
I can't believe that an 11-year-old boy taking a train for the school commute can be reported to the police!
 

miklcct

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Also, why do Heathrow Express provide facility for unaccompanied children but not other train companies?
 

Bletchleyite

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I see the wording the OP quoted is still on the C2C website

It was official wording at one point so I'm not surprised to see it still on the website of a TOC whose website is probably not very important to them.

Also, why do Heathrow Express provide facility for unaccompanied children but not other train companies?

Because HEx is a special, premium service to an airport, where airlines tend to offer this service.
 

matt_world2004

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Also, why do Heathrow Express provide facility for unaccompanied children but not other train companies?
Well tfl do too. 5-10 year olds are allowed to travel with a fare paying adult without a ticket but require a 5-10 zip oyster card when travelling alone
 

Bletchleyite

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A simple answer to the subject line is "because it's the right thing to do". People shouldn't need enforcement to pay for goods and services that they use, and indeed most people don't.

Even more important when a child is involved, as you don't want them to grow up a thief*, do you?

* I am aware fare dodging isn't technically theft.
 

ExToC

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Thanks all, that has been a helpful discussion. I will try and summarise a few things

I think the question around the framing as posed by @Gloster is the nub of it here "is seen as the adult’s responsibility and any sanctions could be applied to the adult."

It seems the under 12 accompanied travel thing is a localised rather than national policy

@Watershed, yes one can be removed from the railway and yes there escalation pathways for persistent antisocial behaviour, but I refer to the narrow ask of is the adult in any way responsible or criminally sanctionable and if not, then why don't we just reflect that in our rules?

@Bletchleyite "because it's the right thing to do" - well yes, I agree, but my point is whether the law actually has teeth here - and if not, should we reconsider the whole charging for kids anyway (I realise narrowly we are talking about under 10s)
 
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PZ 08895

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If one or more adults are travelling with children/babies all under 5, it is worthwhile using a Friends & Family Railcard and purchasing one child ticket as the adult ticket discount using a Friends and Family Railcard will be much more than the cost of the railcard-discounted child ticket. We did that ourselves when our son was just a few weeks old at the time.

It would seem to be the same with the TfW discount - whilst children under 11, or 16 off-peak, can travel free when accompanied by an adult - it may actually cost more as that would prevent the use of a railcard which would provide an even bigger discount. Of course, if there is more than child under 11/16, it could be worth doing a combo of free + one child ticket to get the maximum saving.
 

Turtle

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Child fares start from age 5

The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10. Therefore children <10 cannot be charged or arrested for offences including ticketless travel.

Now I don’t see anything legally, but have found the following “No train company will take responsibility for children travelling alone and will not allow any child under the age of 12 to travel without an adult aged 16 or over. If any child is found travelling alone then the British Transport Police will be called immediately”. (This raises a separate question of whether 11 might be a more sensible age for unaccompanied travel as how would someone in the first year of high school get there by train? but that is another question).

What it does indicate that we expect an accompanying adult (related or not) to be “responsible”. I get it if the adult lies (an obvious lie) and says a 9 year old is 4 – that may fall under false representation. But what if they and the child travel, the adult has an appropriate ticket, the 9 year old has no ticket and on being questioned, the adult makes no such false representation on the child's age but simply says “I have a valid ticket so I’m travelling lawfully, the child is 9 so whether they travelling lawfully or not is immaterial as they can’t be arrested or charged, and I am not criminally responsible for another person.

Wales sidesteps this issue https://tfw.wales/savings-and-offers/train-fares/children-go-free

Grateful for thoughts on this. Does it have the potential to undermine how we deal with under 10's and push us to the Welsh solution being rolled out to the rest of the network.
Seems very strange. I was travelling alone by train from the age of ten and from the age of 8 by bus. This was South London in the 1950s.
 

jfollows

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I went by train to school on my own starting in September 1970, which was when I was 8. Poynton-Cheadle Hulme.
It'd be less safe today but only because of the vast increase in the amount of traffic on the roads, which I had to cross several times at both ends.
 

Dai Corner

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I think you are far safer now then back then...

Reported Road Casualties
Although the last paragraph says

Suppression of activity by vulnerable road usersEdit

Another independent report challenged the government's claim that falling casualty rates meant that roads were becoming 'much safer'. Mayer Hillman, John Adams and John Whitelegg suggest that roads may actually be felt to be sufficiently dangerous as to deter pedestrians from using them. They compared rates for those whose transport options are most limited, the elderly and children and found that:[28]

  • Britain's child pedestrian safety record is worse than the average for Europe, in contrast to the better than average all-ages figure.
  • Children's independent mobility is increasingly curtailed, with fear of traffic being cited as a dominant cause
  • Distances walked have declined more than in other European countries
  • Similar (though less well-defined) observations can be made regarding the elderly

 

contrex

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Seems very strange. I was travelling alone by train from the age of ten and from the age of 8 by bus. This was South London in the 1950s.
I lived in Herne Hill and from the age of 10 in 1962 used to visit my pal in West Norwood on the 172 bus buying a 'tuppenny half'. In 1963 I started at a school in Townley Road, East Dulwich, and used to get the train from Tulse Hill to North Dulwich. We had swimming at the then brand-new National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace and were expected to bring enough fare money to make our own way home afterwards after nightfall in the winter. Aged 12 I started using my North Dulwich to Tulse Hill or West Norwood child returns as unofficial rail rovers (no travelling grippers in those days). School to home via Sutton, Wimbledon, West Croydon, etc. One day I ducked into the Gents toilet on the slow lines platform at Balham and, at the urinal, was approached by a middle aged man. I will just say that he showed me a very nasty thing. I heard a SUB arriving on the down slow and nipped out quick. It didn't really bother me that much at the time, and it was only in early adulthood that I realised that I had been molested, when I told the tale and friends interpreted it that way. I was aware of such things, but I thought that men only bothered girls (I read the court reports in my dad's South London Press). I didn't tell my parents, as that would have achieved nothing. A school friend said a similar thing happened to him between Streatham Common and Balham in a compartment.
 
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WesternLancer

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Seems very strange. I was travelling alone by train from the age of ten and from the age of 8 by bus. This was South London in the 1950s.
Different times of course. I was shocked to find a relative buying the train tickets for their son to go to and from university on the basis that son 'wouldn't know how to do this' - talk about absence of life skills by the ago of 20....
Cue new thread on the youth of today etc etc

Though clearly one does see plenty of people around that age traveling on buses etc these days
 

John Luxton

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Child fares start from age 5

will not allow any child under the age of 12 to travel without an adult aged 16 or over.
When did this rule come in?

I went to an all age independent school from 7 to 18. Someone I knew commuted from the Wirral to Liverpool using the bus and train from the age of 9, starting at the school in September 1969.

His father bought him a rail season ticket - later in the early 70s in was a MPTE Traveller Ticket which available for buses / ferry and trains and available for one week or one month.

He didn't have any problems travelling independently to school when he was under 12.
 

Bletchleyite

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When did this rule come in?

When one or two TOCs wrongly put it on their website and forgot it was there, it seems. Kids under 12 do use trains (I think most parents would say it was OK once they go to "big school" which is about age 11).

That said, I think people see it differently in places where trains are only for going to London. I once put a small group of Scouts (a mix aged 10.5-14) on a train, with tickets, from Berko to Bletchley and then raced it there (legally, it was the all stations stopper) to meet them. When they got off they said the guard had asked them where the adult was. But I don't think anyone would question that self same thing on Merseyrail, a Manchester local train or similar or even the Tube. Going to/from London from outside seems to be seen as needing more maturity. I wasn't allowed to go to London alone until I was actually 18 - thought I could knock around Merseyrail and First North Western (North and Mid Wales Day Rangers and going to Manchester being particular favourites) pretty much as I liked from about 15-16 or so.
 
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Gloster

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At the private school I went to up to the age of 13 there were a number of day-boys, some probably down to eight or nine, who came in on the train to a station a bit under half-a-mile away. Coming in they generally all caught the same train or two, but going home, which in mid-winter could be in the dark, they were likely to go home in small groups or individually. Nobody thought it in the slightest bit unusual, but this was the late 1960s.
 

Watershed

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I wasn't allowed to go to London alone until I was actually 18 - thought I could knock around Merseyrail and First North Western (North and Mid Wales Day Rangers and going to Manchester being particular favourites) pretty much as I liked from about 15-16 or so.
That sounds extraordinary to me. Everyone I know was allowed to go out on trips from age 13 or 14, and to school by train from 11.
 

Bletchleyite

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That sounds extraordinary to me. Everyone I know was allowed to go out on trips from age 13 or 14, and to school by train from 11.

I went to school by train from 11ish and had gone from Town Green to Aughton Park or vice versa a few times before that, but the whole Merseyrail map was only really opened up to me travelling alone from a bit older than that. Going beyond Merseyrail didn't really happen until a fair bit later.

Thinking on I recall taking my Scout Patrol to Windermere for a day walk and I am almost certain it was on a child fare, but it would have been only just.
 

Gloster

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My mother tried to stop me going to London even when I reached 18, but I was no longer listening: we only lived about 40 minutes away in third-rail land. Wimbledon was permitted from about 15 or 16, but anywhere in ‘central’ London, which seemed to extend out to Clapham, never (*). However, I was heading off to Reading, Swindon, Eastleigh, etc. at 13 or 14: that was allowed as it wasn’t London. A great deal of negotiation was involved when I went Railrovering in Scotland at 17: a week in the Highlands was fine, but passing through central London to get the train north!

* - My mother never twigged that I thought that Euston, St Pancras and Liverpool St were in Wimbledon. On one occasion she actually asked a friend coming back from London to check I was at Wimbledon.
 

Egg Centric

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I'm 35 and went on train journies alone at least from age of 8, if not before. I do remember though that when I took a flight on my own at that age I was accompanied by a responsible adult provided by the airline (and now recognise in hindsight I was put in a lounge with them... had I only known I could have served myself whatever I wanted!)

When traveling more recently I have often seen pretty rather young looking kids in school uniform traveling as a rabble. Often private school kids as said.

I see no reason now you can't stick an 8 year old on a train and I don't think societal standards have changed that much that it's extraordinary. My wife and I are planning on having children soon and it's our intention to get them independent as soon as possible, not have them sitting at home faffing around on tik tok and other stuff which is a poor substitute for genuine social interaction. I did get moderated the other day for encouraging a fifteen year old to take a sleeper by himself (which I also did at his age) but appreciate in hindsight this site cannot be seen to be encouraging travel against TOC which apparently (and rather bizarrely) prohibits unaccompanied travel below 16. Without the TOC though would be all for it.


Edited to strike through a rather misinterpretable word!
 

zero

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I think it was the Cumbrian coast line where at around 3pm, I observed a guard trying to sell as many tickets as possible to 20-30 schoolchildren in the time he had available between stations.

Most of them were going 1 or 2 or 3 stops. The guard worked remarkably hard for presumably less than a fiver in commission - but a few kids managed to travel for free (even though some of them had coins waiting in their hands).

They seemed to be between 8-12 years old. Teachers were waiting with them at their starting station and most of them got picked up by parents at the arrival stations.

Also at the northern ends of the Welsh Valley lines I saw lots of young schoolchildren taking the train home, I remember this mainly because it was the first time I heard Welsh being spoken "in the wild".
 

Sm5

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I was c12 and my travels took me from Manchester to London, Carlilse and North East. My parents thought I was down the street at my mates.

It was only in my late 20’s my dad sussed it, as by then I had enough money to process the camera films and have the photos of my travels to prove it…. Of course part the reason I couldnt afford to process the films was because the money was spent in train tickets.

no one ever questioned me, got as far as Clapham jn from North Manchester watching class 33/47/50/73s in the mid 1980’s on one occasion for a day out.. no mobile phones in those days, and parents were at work all day.
worst that happened was some guy did try to grab me coming out of the toilets at Euston station and wanted me to walk off with him, I just ran away.
 
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