Teacher caught not having railcard for multiple journeys

[trainfarecatch]

Hi,

I was caught not having a railcard for a journey to Reading from Martins Heron, on 24/08/24. I had received an email from SWR that initially I did not see, and I have included those below.

I have now seen this email and am in the process of responding, I did travel on several occasions without a railcard despite saying I had a railcard, and totally admit wrongdoing, I did not at all realise the seriousness of this this crime, and since spending the day reading this formum I am very worried.

Below is now my draft response to SWR, I would greatly appreciate any advice that can be given, as I am a teacher and a criminal record would mean I would lose my job!!!!!

As I mention in the email, there is a period where i did have a railcard but I can no longer evidence this.....

Any help greatly appriciated


1st email:
I am currently investigating your case concerning your travel from Martins Heron to Reading Railway Stations on the 24th August 2024. During this journey, you were approached by a SWR Revenue member of staff. You presented a ticket with a Railcard discount and, upon questioning, you were not able to produce a valid Railcard. Consequently, you were reported for prosecution, as your ticket was not valid for your entire journey.



As part of this investigation, I have the authority under the Railway Byelaws and National Conditions of Travel 2022 to examine all tickets purchased and used on the South Western Railway network if an offense has occurred. Through a Data Sharing agreement, I have obtained access to all your Trainline Purchase History. Upon reviewing your purchase history, it has come to my attention that there are other journeys on the South Western Railway Network where evidence suggests that there are multiple tickets that are also not valid for the entirety of your journey. These journeys occurred between the dates of 1st May 2021 to the 24th August 2024.



I have attached the pre-court partial disclosure document Exhibit NJS01, which includes your online Trainline ticket purchase history. All journeys under suspicion are numbered 1 to 123 and highlighted. This provides an opportunity for you to provide an accurate account of each journey, specifying the start and finish points and if you were in possession of a valid Railcard. Could you please complete this document and return this via email, completing columns R, S, T and U for each highlighted line, stating the Start and Finish stations in Column R and S that you travelled from and to. In Column T state whether you were in possession of a valid Railcard, Yes/No for each journey (Providing photographic proof via email of the card or a screen print of the digital card with expiry dates). In Column U state whether you travelled on a Refunded ticket, Yes/No for each journey.



I kindly request that you respond within 7 days of receiving this email. I strongly advise against ignoring this communication and suggest seeking independent legal advice. Assistance and guidance can be obtained from the Citizens Advice Service, and I have attached a link for your reference: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/. It is my hope that with your assistance, we can work towards a resolution, without the need for the potential of this case proceeding to court and further legal action.



Thank you for your cooperation, and I look forward to your prompt response

2nd email:

Dear Miss A

It is with regret that I have not yet received a response to my previous enquiry sent on the 16th October, 2024, as per my email below.

Your cooperation in providing a truthful account within the stipulated timeframe is crucial.

I kindly request your immediate attention to this matter and ask that you respond by Wednesday, 30thOctober, 2024.

Failure to provide the requested information within the specified timeframe will compel me to refer this case to our prosecutor, which may trigger further legal action, including court proceedings.

I strongly advise seeking independent legal advice specialised in dealing with fare evasion. Assistance and guidance can be obtained from the Citizens Advice Service, and I have attached a link for your reference: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/ .

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or require further clarification.

Kind Regards,




My draft response

Hi N,

Firstly, I want to say I am very sorry for my offences and the inconvenience that I have caused you & South Western Railway.

I completely acknowledge the wrong doing in claiming to have a railcard for travel when I did not (any travel with a railcard between the dates of 29/07/22 to 24/08/24 (numbers 106 to 123)).

I have now filled out exhibit NJS01, which is attached - sorry for missing the initial email from you!

I did purchase a 16-25 railcard, I believe on the 22nd Jul 2021 - 21 Jul 2022, before a trip to Cardiff, however my history on the trainline app only goes back to 20th Oct 2022, and I have deleted old emails from that date, so the only evidence to support this is a £30 payment to Trainline on my Barclays app (screenshot provided).

Since the 24th Aug I have learnt about the seriousness of this offence and I absoluetely will make sure that any future journey's have tickets that are valid for the entire journey.

I am a school teacher so I would really appriciate an opportunity to reach an out-of-court settlement on this matter.

I am more than willing to repay South Western Railway the full price of all occurrences as well as any other associated or administrative costs.

Also, There is another person included on the exhibit NJS01 - , and I am not sure who that is, so cannot account for his journeys.

If there is anything else you need, please let me know.

Kind regards,

 

[Hadders]

Welcome to the forum!

SWR are entitled to prosectute you in the Magistrates Court if they wan to but they are normally willing to offer an out of court settlement to people who co-operate with their investigation and I strongly suspect you will get offered one, even though you did not reply to their initial email. Expect to have to pay the cost of the fares avoided at the full Anytime rate with no discount for the invalid tickets you did purchase. You will need to be in a position to pay the settlement in full within a few days of it being offered, payment in installments isn't normally allowed.

i think your letter is generally ok but I suggest a few amendments:

Remove the bit about being a teacher - it could be argued that a teacher should know that you cannot buy railcard discounted tickets if you don't possess a railcard.
I suggest changing 'I am more than willing...' to 'I wondered if it would be possible to deal with this issue without going to court. I am willing to pay...'
The other person included on the list of journeys - make this very clear that these are not yours on the exhibit
End the letter 'Yours sincerely' if it is sent to a named person or 'Yours faithfully' if not.

It might be best to wait until tomorrow before sending the email in case any other forum members have other suggestions.

 

[trainfarecatch]

Welcome to the forum!

SWR are entitled to prosectute you in the Magistrates Court if they wan to but they are normally willing to offer an out of court settlement to people who co-operate with their investigation and I strongly suspect you will get offered one, even though you did not reply to their initial email. Expect to have to pay the cost of the fares avoided at the full Anytime rate with no discount for the invalid tickets you did purchase. You will need to be in a position to pay the settlement in full within a few days of it being offered, payment in installments isn't normally allowed.

i think your letter is generally ok but I suggest a few amendments:

Remove the bit about being a teacher - it could be argued that a teacher should know that you cannot buy railcard discounted tickets if you don't possess a railcard.
I suggest changing 'I am more than willing...' to 'I wondered if it would be possible to deal with this issue without going to court. I am willing to pay...'
The other person included on the list of journeys - make this very clear that these are not yours on the exhibit
End the letter 'Yours sincerely' if it is sent to a named person or 'Yours faithfully' if not.

It might be best to wait until tomorrow before sending the email in case any other forum members have other suggestions.

Ok thank you that is quite helpful, there are about 60 that are for the other guy

 

[30907]

Ok thank you that is quite helpful, there are about 60 that are for the other guy

It seems unusual that your TL account has been used by an anonymous stranger - or are you suggesting TL have supplied info relating to a different account?
I suggest clarifying the situation in your reply to SW (no need to tell us!)

On the subject of convictions, if it comes to a prosecution (which is unlikely) I would suggest you check the position from your contract, your union etc. (It is over 6 years since I was a governor so advice from me might be out of date, but the one thing that is certain to be a dismissable offence is concealing an unspent conviction.)

 

[greatkingrat]

Do you mean you purchased tickets for somebody else, or that SWR have sent you the purchasing history of a different person?

If the latter, it would be tempting to threaten to report the data protection breach to the Information Commissioner which I suspect might make the whole thing go away!

 

[trainfarecatch]

Do you mean you purchased tickets for somebody else, or that SWR have sent you the purchasing history of a different person?

If the latter, it would be tempting to threaten to report the data protection breach to the Information Commissioner which I suspect might make the whole thing go away!

No, int he exhibit, the first half of the records are a different person (name and email included) but for someone I’ve never heard of?

Maybe I should say I’m concerned about the gdpr ?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Oct 2024 ==

It seems unusual that your TL account has been used by an anonymous stranger - or are you suggesting TL have supplied info relating to a different account?
I suggest clarifying the situation in your reply to SW (no need to tell us!)

On the subject of convictions, if it comes to a prosecution (which is unlikely) I would suggest you check the position from your contract, your union etc. (It is over 6 years since I was a governor so advice from me might be out of date, but the one thing that is certain to be a dismissable offence is concealing an unspent conviction.)

Yes, hopefully it doesnt
Come to that!! Do you think I should mention I’m a teacher? I know hadders said probably not

 

[ANDREW_D_WEBB]

It is unlikely you will automatically lose your job for a conviction of fare evasion, a criminal record is not an automatic bar to teaching. Put simply most schools are so desperate for teachers they won’t want to lose you.

If you are in a union (NASUWT or NEU) speak to your rep or local office for advice. They should be able to support you in how to approach your headteacher if you are convicted.

Whatever you do please do not attempt to hide any convictions from your employer. Doing this is gross misconduct and grounds for immediate dismissal

 

[Hadders]

On the subject of the ‘other guy’ if this person is completely unrelated then make sure you clearly state to SWR that you have no relationship to this person and that they appear to have given you this information in error. It is a GDPR breach and I would consider making a complaint either to SWR’s data controller or the Information Commissioner but personally I would do this after your case has been settled.

On convictions, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If the case proceeds to court then @trainfarecatch would need to tell their employer. Their contract would state when they needed to tell them, it would probably be when they are summonsed to court or when they are convicted. Their trade union rep could offer appropriate advice in this situation.

That said, @trainfarecatch is hoping to avoid the case proceeding to court and if this is achieved then there is no need to tell their employer anything at all about the case.

 

[WesternLancer]

No, int he exhibit, the first half of the records are a different person (name and email included) but for someone I’ve never heard of?

Maybe I should say I’m concerned about the gdpr ?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Oct 2024 ==


Yes, hopefully it doesnt
Come to that!! Do you think I should mention I’m a teacher? I know hadders said probably not

Don’t report them for GDPR breaches until well after you have secured a settlement and removed any threat of prosecution. And even then I would not do that. Look at it from their point of view. You are a fare evader, do not annoy them further. Just politely point out that another persons records seem to have been added to your own in error and request they correct that.

Also in my opinion don’t mention that you are a teacher. Frankly most people would think you should know better even if you didn’t know this was specifically a criminal offence to avoid paying the correct fare.

You are probably paid more than the person reading your reply at SWR. Don’t annoy them or provoke them to put your file in the ‘send to prosecutors’ pile.

I see they mention ticket refunding in their e mail. It may be standard text but if you have done that with any tickets you may need to mention it in your reply.

Good luck in getting it sorted. If you make it clear you will pay what you owe there is a strong probability you can achieve that.

 

[Undaunted]

Don’t report them for GDPR breaches until well after you have secured a settlement and removed any threat of prosecution. And even then I would not do that. Look at it from their point of view. You are a fare evader, do not annoy them further. Just politely point out that another persons records seem to have been added to your own in error and request they correct that.

I strongly agree with this. You are not the injured party (aside from the attempt by SWR to get you to pay someone else's evaded fares, of course!). It is not your personal data that has been shared without your permission; it is someone else's personal data that has been shared with you. Therefore, in your current situation, threatening to report them to the ICO could rightly be seen as an aggressive and provocative act.

I think @WesternLancer's suggested approach is exemplary.

 

[Haywain]

Maybe I should say I’m concerned about the gdpr ?

And maybe not. If there are journeys which are not yours, simply state that they are not yours, and not purchased from an account or using an email address that you have access to. You might reasonably and politely question how they have associated them with you but take care to avoid sarcasm.

 

[John R]

Their letter starts "Dear Ms A", and I would respond similarly, as opposed to "Hi X", as that is much too informal for the situation you are in.

Rather than apologising for their inconvenience, I would apologise for the loss of revenue.

I agree with others not to mention the GDPR breach - it runs the risk of coming across far too snarky, and you really are in a tight spot here, so you want to keep them fully on side. So just make it clear that they are not relevant for your travel.

Finally, I'd reiterate that you need to be ready to pay the amount that they will ask for, based on Anytime Single fares. If any of the journeys are long distance, then it will quickly add up. For example, taking as an example the Cardiff trip you mention, the current Anytime Single is £133.20, so for just one return journey they are likely to ask for £266. Obviously if they are all local journeys then it is likely to be much lower. (They won't reduce it by whatever you paid, which is likely to be a fraction of that anyway.)

 

[trainfarecatch]

Their letter starts "Dear Ms A", and I would respond similarly, as opposed to "Hi X", as that is much too informal for the situation you are in.

Rather than apologising for their inconvenience, I would apologise for the loss of revenue.

I agree with others not to mention the GDPR breach - it runs the risk of coming across far too snarky, and you really are in a tight spot here, so you want to keep them fully on side. So just make it clear that they are not relevant for your travel.

Finally, I'd reiterate that you need to be ready to pay the amount that they will ask for, based on Anytime Single fares. If any of the journeys are long distance, then it will quickly add up. For example, taking as an example the Cardiff trip you mention, the current Anytime Single is £133.20, so for just one return journey they are likely to ask for £266. Obviously if they are all local journeys then it is likely to be much lower. (They won't reduce it by whatever you paid, which is likely to be a fraction of that anyway.)

Hi, ok thank you, what would you recommend I do about the Cardiff trip and that duration where I had a rail card but cannot evidence it, outside of a Barclays £30 payment to Trainline….

 

[Hadders]

Hi, ok thank you, what would you recommend I do about the Cardiff trip and that duration where I had a rail card but cannot evidence it, outside of a Barclays £30 payment to Trainline….

Does the website version of Trainline allow you to go back further in the transaction history?

If it doesn't, I'd simply say what you've told us here. Tell them that you did purchase a railcard, show the bank statement payment and say that you are no longer able to access this due to the length of time that has elapsed. I don't know if they will accept this explanation but it's worth trying.

 

[John R]

That is more problematic. You might say it is unreasonable of them to demand proof of a prior held railcard, but for all they know you have never held one - it's not like you presented one that had expired, which we often see here. In those cases we tend to think it is unreasonable for them to ask about prior railcards.

You can prove you paid £30 to Trainline, and I agree it would be a coincidence if that was for a train fare that happened to be exactly the amount of a Railcard, so hopefully they will accept that. Although it's not impossible that you bought one for someone else.

Ultimately if they ask you pay again for those journeys you'll probably have to suck it up and agree, else they will prosecute you for the one offence.

 

[mad_rich]

I would lead with an apology for your delay in response.

"Thank you for your email of [2nd email date]. I regret that I didn't receive your original of 16 October [because it was caught by spam filter/ whatever], and I'm grateful that you have given me an extended period to respond."

You might also want to get in touch with Trainline, and see if they can find evidence of the Railcard they sold you.

As far as the second person is concerned - you have absolutely no connection? You never bought those tickets or, allowed anyone else to use your Trainline account, and presumably they're for journeys completely unrelated to your normal journeys?