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Hi guys I need some advise on a matter relating fare evasion conviction, I just got a job and my employer did my basic DBS check and there was fare evasion conviction under my name and fine of almost £600, The offence date is May 2022 and i was convicted is septemer 2022. However I was not even aware of any such thing as i never receive any correspondence or any letter about it and i do have valid ticket for this date. Now i have disputed that with DBS and they are asking me to go to the police station and give the finger prints is it normal to do so?
if I remember correctly back in 2020 a ticket officer took my details as I didn't have the valid ticket for that specific train and my train ticket was for the train before which i missed so could it be for that mistake ?
Can i please get some advise on it as how to go about it. Thanks
If you do a Google search for statutory declaration you may be able to get this conviction set aside and the process restarted. You and you have 21 days to do this from becoming aware of the problem and in that time once you have submitted the statutory declaration you may be able to get the train company to agree to an out of court settlement. This is of course not guaranteed.
Would it not be a good idea to go give the fingerprints at the police station, as the I am dead sure that the offence date mentioned on my dbs I haven’t done nothing wrong on that date and even I have a valid ticket for that specific date and year. Thanks
Would it not be a good idea to go give the fingerprints at the police station, as the I am dead sure that the offence date mentioned on my dbs I haven’t done nothing wrong on that date and even I have a valid ticket for that specific date and year. Thanks
There won’t be any point giving your fingerprints voluntarily to the police because people who are convicted of fare evasion don’t have their fingerprints taken anyway, as they’re not arrested. In fact the police aren’t usually involved at all as the train company prosecutes you privately.
Follow the guidance above about a statutory declaration and don’t give your fingerprints to the police.
Would it not be a good idea to go give the fingerprints at the police station, as the I am dead sure that the offence date mentioned on my dbs I haven’t done nothing wrong on that date and even I have a valid ticket for that specific date and year. Thanks
1- date of offence on my dbs 10 may 2022 and I was convicted on 20 sep 2022 which is I believe is totally wrong date of offence I never had such a thing on that date..
2-I had a valid ticket for that day and I believe I was working in Leeds on that day (10 may 2022)
3- I became aware of it on 12 January when I received my dbs certificate.
The process of giving fingerprints is invoked when a recipient of a non-blank DBS certificate asserts that the data on the certificate relates to a person other than themselves, such as due to mistaken identity.
It seems to me the statutory declaration process would be the correct process to follow here – especially as the clock is ticking because an SD must be filed within 21 days of becoming aware that one has been convicted.
Court records are not always totally accurate and I would not rule out the possibility that the conviction relates to the incident the OP mentions from 2020, which could have been laid before the court in time and then repeatedly deferred due to COVID. If the OP has moved address during this time it's possible post about the matter may not have reached them.
How to challenge a decision by a magistrates' court. Including how to get a fine reviewed, if you did not know about your case, how to appeal to the Crown Court.
Use this form to make a declaration of ignorance of proceedings
www.gov.uk
Then you can come back here for clarification.
It is generally wise to make the declaration witnessed by a solicitor rather than at the court, to prevent the court starting to deal with the case at the same time as you make the declaration.
You can call a solicitor's office and check how much they charge for witnessing the declaration - it should be something like £5 or £10. Make sure that the solicitor does not think you are asking for advice on the case and so expecting you to pay more than the small fee for witnessing the declaration.
If you submit the declaration within 21 days of hearing about the criminal case/conviction, the court is obliged to void the conviction simply because you have made the declaration that you didn't know you were charged with the offence. The merits of your defence don't matter.
If you submit it after the 21 days, you have to give a reason for the delay. It would seem reasonable for the court to void the conviction if the delay was caused by confusing/wrong information from DBS.
If you upload the correspondence with identifying details removed there may be some other information which would enable people on here to give more specific advice.
You can let the train company know that you are making/have made/have submitted the declaration. It's probably best to do that after giving more details on here and getting advice. You can put together evidence for the company that it wasn't you, so that it's easier for the company to drop the case after the conviction is voided by the court.
if I remember correctly back in 2020 a ticket officer took my details as I didn't have the valid ticket for that specific train and my train ticket was for the train before which i missed so could it be for that mistake ?
So you can familiarise yourself with the process over the weekend, and call a solicitor (or more than one to try to get an appointment at short notice) on Monday morning. After the solicitor witnesses the declaration you can take the form to the court or send it next day/signed for. Please note that the form says you can get help with it at a magistrates' court, so it should be possible to satisfy yourself that you are following the process correctly by contacting court staff by email, phone or in person when/if you hand it over.
If you're in a union you can ask them if they give free legal advice.
Hi guys I need some advise on a matter relating fare evasion conviction, I just got a job and my employer did my basic DBS check and there was fare evasion conviction under my name and fine of almost £600, The offence date is May 2022 and i was convicted is septemer 2022.
How to challenge a decision by a magistrates' court. Including how to get a fine reviewed, if you did not know about your case, how to appeal to the Crown Court.
Use this form to make a declaration of ignorance of proceedings
www.gov.uk
Then you can come back here for clarification.
It is generally wise to make the declaration witnessed by a solicitor rather than at the court, to prevent the court starting to deal with the case at the same time as you make the declaration.
You can call a solicitor's office and check how much they charge for witnessing the declaration - it should be something like £5 or £10. Make sure that the solicitor does not think you are asking for advice on the case and so expecting you to pay more than the small fee for witnessing the declaration.
If you submit the declaration within 21 days of hearing about the criminal case/conviction, the court is obliged to void the conviction simply because you have made the declaration that you didn't know you were charged with the offence. The merits of your defence don't matter.
If you submit it after the 21 days, you have to give a reason for the delay. It would seem reasonable for the court to void the conviction if the delay was caused by confusing/wrong information from DBS.
If you upload the correspondence with identifying details removed there may be some other information which would enable people on here to give more specific advice.
You can let the train company know that you are making/have made/have submitted the declaration. It's probably best to do that after giving more details on here and getting advice. You can put together evidence for the company that it wasn't you, so that it's easier for the company to drop the case after the conviction is voided by the court.
That seems unlikely as the date of offence given was in 2022.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
So you can familiarise yourself with the process over the weekend, and call a solicitor (or more than one to try to get an appointment at short notice) on Monday morning. After the solicitor witnesses the declaration you can take the form to the court or send it next day/signed for. Please note that the form says you can get help with it at a magistrates' court, so it should be possible to satisfy yourself that you are following the process correctly by contacting court staff by email, phone or in person when/if you hand it over.
If you're in a union you can ask them if they give free legal advice.
Thanks for this detailed response, thats what is confusing me as the date of offence is totally different and moreover the date of birth is wrong ( I don’t remember recalling what DOB I gave for the ticket checker as it was in 2020 but the year and month are correct) so I don’t know how shall I go about the solicitors are asking around £700 to £1125.
Would it not be a good idea to go give the fingerprints at the police station, as the I am dead sure that the offence date mentioned on my dbs I haven’t done nothing wrong on that date and even I have a valid ticket for that specific date and year. Thanks
Maybe DBS has the wrong name/matched the name to you wrongly, and/or the court didn't convict anyone with your name in the first place.
Or maybe DBS have a different date of "offence" from what the court has, for example, in a summons.
You could email the court including relevant parts of the correspondence between you and DBS, and ask whether the name, date of offence and other details match the court's record of conviction and a charge sheet/summons.
You could also say in an email to the court that you intend to submit a statutory declaration - which might provide extra insurance in the hopefully unlikely event that there are any problems with the declaration, and this makes it easier for the court to decide in favour of voiding the conviction.
Court records are not always totally accurate and I would not rule out the possibility that the conviction relates to the incident the OP mentions from 2020, which could have been laid before the court in time and then repeatedly deferred due to COVID. If the OP has moved address during this time it's possible post about the matter may not have reached them.
As the "offence" has appeared on the DBS check, we would normally expect it to include the more serious element of "intent to avoid a fare" because the less serious offences don't normally appear on the check.
If you were convicted in 2022 for a offence you committed in 2020, the worst outcome might be that after you get the more serious conviction voided, it's replaced by a strict-liability byelaw conviction (basically for not having a valid ticket, with no implication of intent to avoid a fare) which would be of less concern to an employer.
And if you are guilty of committing that lesser offence, you can still ask the company to agree an out-of-court settlement.
They may have only prosecuted because it seemed you were ignoring their letter/s, and thought they might as well charge you for deliberately trying to avoid a fare. There may well be less incentive to take the case to court (again) with someone who does engage with the company.
Just to check, is this a Regulation of Railways Act 1889 section 5(3)(a) offence? Again, if you upload the correspondence with identifying details removed, this may help.
So from the comments it’s seems like I should make a SD and submitt to the court and then follow the next step afterwards so I should I not give my finger prints to the police, as the DBS has told me that if your fingerprints does not match to the fingerprints that they held in record this record would be taken off from your account.
I hope you'll forgive me if you already know some or all of this. Removing the DBS record doesn't remove the conviction. There is less point getting the DBS record removed if you need to tell the employer about the conviction anyway. Neither the DBS nor the police can overturn a court decision. And if there is a conviction matching your details, you are still required to pay the fine.
The SD has a deadline which is approaching, so it is wise to focus on that.
What I am saying above is that the position may become clearer if you ask the court staff what details they have about this case. That may help show whether there actually was a conviction matching those details, or DBS have got some important detail/s wrong, or whether court details help explain what's happened.
You can do that at the same time as making sure the SD is valid and there by the deadline.
I hope you'll forgive me if you already know some or all of this. Removing the DBS record doesn't remove the conviction. There is less point getting the DBS record removed if you need to tell the employer about the conviction anyway. Neither the DBS nor the police can overturn a court decision. And if there is a conviction matching your details, you are still required to pay the fine.
The SD has a deadline which is approaching, so it is wise to focus on that.
What I am saying above is that the position may become clearer if you ask the court staff what details they have about this case. That may help show whether there actually was a conviction matching those details, or DBS have got some important detail/s wrong, or whether court details help explain what's happened.
You can do that at the same time as making sure the SD is valid and there by the deadline.
Thanks a lot for your explanations, the SD needs to be submitted within 21 working days or 21 days I came to know about the conviction on 12 January, also do you think I would need to get a lawyer, or I can defend myself and be honest and tell everything that happened.
Lawyers are asking for a lot of money around £700 to £1125.
You haven’t yet told us what happened on the day in question (putting aside the issue of whether the ’date of offence’ on the disclosure certificate is the correct one), such as what ticket you held and the journey you made.
As things stand, your version of events is not persuasive. For example, you know for certain that you had a valid ticket, but you only ‘believe’ you were working in Leeds.
Just to be clear, is Leeds remote from the site of the alleged offence? If so, some evidence of that (credit card transactions, employer work records etc) would seem crucial to the OP's case.
Does the OP know which actual Court found him guilty, whether it is him or not?
And have we actually asserted whether he has ever been in trouble with the railway over a ticketing offence.
None of this appears to be obvious.
As far as I can recall the name of the Court is not given on the DBS cert, so that to me would be the next step.
Thanks a lot for your explanations, the SD needs to be submitted within 21 working days or 21 days I came to know about the conviction on 12 January, also do you think I would need to get a lawyer, or I can defend myself and be honest and tell everything that happened.
Lawyers are asking for a lot of money around £700 to £1125.
You do not need a lawyer to do any work on the possible offence at the moment.
However, it would be good to use a lawyer to take your Statutory Declaration (SD): there is a fixed fee* of £5 + £2 for each document for them to do this. You then deliver the SD to court and await the next move. If you make an appointment to swear the SD at court, it will most likely be at a time when the railway prosecutor is in court and they will want to move to a plea there and then.
*They may want to charge for creating the SD - there are plenty of free examples of the wording on the interweb, or we could easily help here. It does not need to be on a special form or type of paper. It's the wording and the witnessing that are important.
Once you have the SD delivered to the court in 21 days, you should hear more about the case, and the forum can provide more advice.
Another possibility:
I wonder if the offender, perhaps maintaining the false name originally given, attended the hearing; and even settled the fine.
So he would have taken the financial hit, but evaded a criminal record.
(I don't know if the courts run identity checks, especially if it was, in fact, all done by post).
It is 21 calendar days, so your SD must be received by the court by 2 February. Given the deadline, I would encourage you to submit it in person or send by special delivery so the deadline is not missed.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The SD must be accompanied by an indication of plea if the original prosecution was commenced under the single justice procedure, which most railway cases are nowadays.
If you make an appointment to swear the SD at court, it will most likely be at a time when the railway prosecutor is in court and they will want to move to a plea there and then.
There's a danger here of the cart being put before the horse. The OP is under no obligation to persuade this forum that he is innocent of the offence for which a conviction has been recorded against his name. It is quite enough for now that he is adamant that he did no wrong on the day of the alleged offence. That being the case, his appropriate course of action is to ensure that a statutory declaration of his ignorance of the proceedings leading to that conviction reaches the court at which he was convicted within the 21 day period following his discovery of it.
As @island notes, if the prosecution was commenced by the Single Justice Procedure, the OP's SD should be accompanied by a brief statement to the court of his intention to plead not guilty, but the means by which the proceedings were commenced may not be apparent on the DBS certificate. In that case the OP will either need to contact the court to ascertain how they were started, or simply provide a statement of intention to plead not guilty on the assumption that the SJP was used.
If there is any doubt as to whether he is, in fact, the person against whom the conviction has been recorded, it is a straightforward matter to adjust the relevant wording in the SD; e.g. paragraph 1 of the model SD could be amended to read: "The Disclosure and Barring Service have indicated that I am the defendant named above."
If the OP is subsequently obliged to acknowledge that a conviction was appropriate (e.g. because it arose from the 2020 incident mentioned, though the date of the offence was given wrongly on the DBS certificate) then he may wish to consider a change of plea if no out of court settlement can be agreed, and should lose no credit due to the initial 'not guilty' plea if that was prompted by an error on the DBS record.
All the DBS Cert shows is that the person named has been found guilty of a criminal offence, certainly not where or when the offence occured or which Court it was. It is very basic!
As things stand, your version of events is not persuasive. For example, you know for certain that you had a valid ticket, but you only ‘believe’ you were working in Leeds.
This is quite unfair: it's not unusual not to know exactly what you were doing on a given day a year ago, whereas finding an e-ticket with a specific date on it is simply a matter of searching back through e-mails. I also just don't think it's appropriate to antagonise the OP and accuse them of lying
There's a danger here of the cart being put before the horse. The OP is under no obligation to persuade this forum that he is innocent of the offence for which a conviction has been recorded against his name. It is quite enough for now that he is adamant that he did no wrong on the day of the alleged offence. That being the case, his appropriate course of action is to ensure that a statutory declaration of his ignorance of the proceedings leading to that conviction reaches the court at which he was convicted within the 21 day period following his discovery of it.
This is quite unfair: it's not unusual not to know exactly what you were doing on a given day a year ago, whereas finding an e-ticket with a specific date on it is simply a matter of searching back through e-mails. I also just don't think it's appropriate to antagonise the OP and accuse them of lying
I am not aware that anyone has accused the OP of lying, least of all me.
It is simply the case that the details provided thus far are not particularly persuasive, including the lack of particulars as to what this ticket may be (which we still don’t know) and why it may be relevant when the OP is less than certain as to whereabouts he may have been on the day in question.
By comparison, the OP is adamant that he had a valid ticket, but for what? Why does the OP say that?
It is exactly this type of discrepancy which undermines witness credibility without suggesting that a witness is lying.
Is it absolutely clear that having found out on Thursday 12 January, @tuhani has until Thursday 2nd rather than Wednesday 1st, or is it worth checking with the court staff (if/when it's clear which court decided the case)?
If finding out which court it was takes much time, we might hope the court would grant an extension (and perhaps that the court would also take into account confusion related to communications from DBS about what to do).
It may help to understand the scope of what is revealed on a DBS Basic Certificate by taking a look at an example, one of which can be found at https://unlock.org.uk/guide/basic-disclosure/. From this it appears that the certificate presumably received by the OP would show (1) the date of conviction, (2) the name of the convicting court, and (3) the offence giving rise to the conviction, including the date of its commission. Unsurprisingly there seems to be nothing on the Basic Certificate to show whether proceedings were commenced by the laying of an information or by the Single Justice Procedure, so that would have to be the subject of further enquiry. It's regrettable that a defendant is expected to submit with his SD an indication of plea where the SJP has been employed if, as may often be the case, such defendant has only been alerted to a conviction of which he was previously unaware by receipt of a DBS certificate lacking details of how the case against him was started. Without prior knowledge of the case he is, by definition, almost certain not to have that information.
@tuhani, you could email the court staff by early Monday morning (and follow up with a phone call if they don't reply soon) to ask what details of the case they have:
1. Date of offence;
2. Date of birth;
3. Was there a summons or a single justice procedure notice (there might have been both if the train company made a mistake)?
As the dates of offence and birth don't apply to you, and so you are wondering if there have been errors, it seems reasonable to ask court staff to confirm details on
a) the court record of the conviction and
b) the summons and/or SJP notice.
4. Name and contact details of prosecutor;
5. Date of conviction.
It might be easiest for them to email you images of the paperwork.
You can say that you only have a couple of days to submit the declaration, and ask whether the deadline is Wednesday or Thursday. Generally, if there's something you ask that you will rely on, it's wise to get it in writing.
Remember that the form says (in paragraph 2 of "How to use this form") that you can ask for help at a magistrates' court office. Before going to the solicitor, you could send court staff an image of the completed form and ask whether it is properly filled in (not whether the details are correct, but whether you've given the right type of information).
You could also ask them if it looks OK if/when you go to the court to hand it over (again, if you can get it confirmed in writing after emailing the image/s, that can provide extra reassurance. Of course you wouldn't be allowed to change anything on the form which the solicitor is supposed to have already witnessed).
Normally offences serious enough to show in a basic DBS check are those which train companies are not allowed to prosecute for via the single justice procedure.
As the "offence" has appeared on the DBS check, we would normally expect it to include the more serious element of "intent to avoid a fare" because the less serious offences don't normally appear on the check.
is this a Regulation of Railways Act 1889 section 5(3)(a) offence? Again, if you upload the correspondence with identifying details removed, this may help.
It's still best to check. There's been at least one case where the train company wrongly used an SJP notice to try to start a prosecution for the wrong type of offence; if that's the case you can come back here for advice, and/or ask court staff, about what to write on the form.
Filling in the form
Checking would also enable you to tick "section 16E" if the conviction was through the Single Justice Procedure and "section 14" otherwise.
For "defendant's date of birth", you can write "My date of birth is xx.xx.xxxx. The date of birth given by the Disclosure and Barring Service [and/or the court] was yy.xx.xxx".
As @John Palmer indicated, you can cross out "I am the defendant..." and put "The Disclosure and Barring Service have indicated that I am the defendant named above."
Correspondence
If you upload the redacted correspondence this could help us avoid giving wrong advice, because we can then take the details into account.
If you're asking court staff to do work at short notice, then what's in correspondence from DBS (or possibly what they said on the phone) may help ensure court staff see the delay since 12 January as understandable.
Hi @tspaul26 , I am not lying at all I think the situation is not clear to you,
Let me explain to you I was travelling from york to Leeds, back in 2020 I had a ticket but it was for the earlier train that I missed and it was transpennine . Now the TC asked me to buy a new ticket for which I didn’t have no money at all he took my details off me.. but after I never received anything from up until now when dbs check showed me that I have this conviction for which the offence was done in. may 2022 but I and 100% positive that I never had such problem on the train or with any ticket checker since that day. Also I have valid train tickets for may 2022 and may 2021 so it makes it impossible that the offence date is may 2022 that I have been alleged for.
Also my day of birth is worng on my dbs. However the rest of info is correct. That’s all what I know I don’t know the name of prosecuter or which magistrate court In west Yorkshire have convicted me or the is this conviction for 2020 as @John Palmer has mentioned is his post about the info in basic DBS.
After that I disputed it with dbs they asked me to go the police station and give the fingerprints.I was about to go give the fingerprints in the hope that the date of offence and the day of birth is wrong so it might not be me.
However after writing here a lot of people have suggested me to do the SD and find out which court has given this order. So
Now tomorrow I will try and find the details of the conviction and try to write a SD which I have never written before. @some bloke has stated next steps.
That’s the whole story.
But once again I want to thanks all the members for helping and suggesting me .
