It was the last part I disagreed with although I may have interpreted it differently to how you intended - that the TOCs are perfectly entitled to use the wording Penalty Fare outside of a DfT approved scheme and they aren't then Penalty Fakes even in the absense of DfT approval. Whilst I agree they are valid charges under railway law , I still feel the term penalty fake is a reasonable description. Although you may have not intended it to read this way.
I believe that you are right, this is down to misinterpretation. I'm sorry if my wording mislead, I thought that I had qualified my comment pretty clearly right at the beginning of it and which I have repeated here.
No, only TOCs that have a DfT licenced Penalty Fares scheme in place should be referring to their notices in relation to Penalty Fares policy.
For avoidance of doubt, I believe that any TOC that does not have a DfT licenced Penalty Fares scheme should
definitely not refer to the penalty fares rules as relevant to their process.
As
DaveNewcastle has pointed out very clearly here:
I strongly agree. The relentless repetition of the phrase 'penalty fake' on this forum is very tiresome and disappointing in the context of so many otherwise intelligent contributions.
and in relation to administrative disposals:
Yes, and in case there is any doubt in the minds of the anti-rail posters on here, an administrative settlement of an alleged criminal offence is NOT confined to actions brought by Railway Companies nor even to private prosecutions.
and confirmed again by
yorkie
No. It's an out of court settlement, not a Penalty Fare.
'Administrative disposals' involving payment of a fee will be applied by all enforcement process where it is considered appropriate and that includes cases handled by Police and CPS at times. MoJ guidelines positively encourage it in some cases.
For the 'anti-rail posters' that Dave refers to and in the case of Railway Byelaws, this is not some archaic and obscure legislation that we are talking about, the current Byelaws date back to only 2005 and that latest review actually toughened them up.
I am certainly not in favour of prosecuting Byelaw 18 as a matter of course.
I agree that action should
only be considered where a traveller has had clear opportunity to pay and has chosen not to take that opportunity.
Opportunist fare evasion remains a problem in a great many areas where facilities have been made available and are in working order. I agree that a card only TVM does not provide an unequivocal opportunity to pay in all cases, but when a traveller has had a number of further opportunities to pay by cash on-route, whether at changing points or on train and is detected leaving the railway having not paid, then action is certainly justified. The National Rail published connecting times have relevance in this situation.
Having had 38 years of Penalty Fares in operation on railways in this country it is clear that there are a great many areas where the process has not achieved its aims and where that system has no value whatsoever. It was designed to deal with short hop commuter routes where opportunist ticketless travel was identified as a major loss of revenue, the rules make clear it is not a tool for dealing with fare evasion. It remains a valuable tool along with prosecution of offences, but only where used as part of a complete revenue protection strategy.
Along with Transport Focus and the guidelines produced by RDG (ATOC), I agree that an administrative settlement is appropriate in cases of ticketless travel contrary to Byelaw liability where there is no evidence of a similar matter concerning that traveller having been reported in similar circumstances.
The fact is that as has previously been posted, prosecution under S.5.3 RoRA (1889) will and does succeed in almost all cases where a competent prosecutor refers to the Appeal Court judgment in the case of Corbyn (1978).
"Having passed opportunities to pay and having not paid, he had not declared his journey and the inspector reports that he showed intention to leave the railway"
We've had this debate before (most recently
Severity of railway ticketing laws compared to other laws ) so I suggest we don't have it again.
I couldn't agree more, we will all have to work with what we have if and until this is changed by government. Whatever we might like to suggest on this, or any other forum isn't going to alter things in short order.
