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.
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.