Train companies misrepresenting railway regulations

[furlong]

Moderator note: Split from

WMT - fraud investigation

Hi, hoping for some advice on the below matter and how to respond please. I was issued a PFN for purchasing ticket after boarding the train when I was stopped by WMT revenue protection at Snow Hill. I paid the PFN the same day. I subsequently received an email from the fraud investigation...

www.railforums.co.uk

Is an external criminal investigation into this train company required? Heads should roll! Deliberately misrepresenting railway regulations and law for corporate pecuniary advantage? Rogue behaviour which needs stamping out immediately! Either train staff how to perform investigations correctly and create compliant procedures for them to follow, or don't employ them at all. (Reference: Post Office.)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Jun 2025 ==

"if stopped by a revenue officer a ticket with an invalid Railcard the penalty under the regulations of railways acts 2018 and National Rail Conditions of carriage it is £100 plus the cost of a valid ticket for every journey"

Does anyone know where this figure of £100 comes from?
I know it's the (undiscounted) Penalty Fare amount, but that wouldn't apply to a situation which includes the "cost of a valid ticket for every journey".

At least we know that humans are writing these messages because generative AI would write in proper grammar.

The whole thing has so many errors - the Conditions of carriage are even no longer in force! - you wonder how many other people might have received nonsense like this and potentially been conned into paying money on a misrepresented or false legal basis.

To be clear, investigating historic transactions is perfectly acceptable, but this is absolutely not the way to communicate. It's hardly rocket science to create appropriate template letters reviewed by lawyers to cover the common scenarios needing to be handled.

Next question: Are the people sending these letters or their managers on any form of commission, directly or indirectly (via targets, bonuses)? Might there be perverse incentives involved?

I just hope this thread is a wind-up, as the alternative may be another railway scandal.

 

[Hadders]

I do not condone fare evasion but I am becoming concerned at WMTs behaviour.

I wonder how many of these emails they send out, and how many people simply pay up. It is of course likely that many of the people receiving these emails have been involved in fare evasion and many will argue that what WMT is doing is fine because of this.

BUT

WMT must operate within the law and it seems to me that they would not be able to secure a conviction in many of the cases where they send these threatening emails.

I have said for many years that I believe the legal framework around rail fare evasion requires urgent reform, and until this happens we will continue to see things like this happen. The rail industry does not have a good record when it comes to this sort of thing. There's been 76,000 convictions that are in the process of being overturned because the rail industry (aided and abetted by the courts) failed to follow the correct process. Also, this behaviour is not a million miles away from the sort of things seen in the Post Office Horizon scandal.

 

[AlterEgo]

These emails are quite concerning. Firstly they are written by someone with a low proficiency in written English. The email in this thread literally makes no sense, misinterprets the law, and implies the company can charge in effect a penalty owing to the Fraud Act.

WMT are extremely lazy. Look, if you’ve found someone fiddling their fares by boarding at Coventry at 0715 but buying fares from Adderley Park, go and actually stop them. It’s not rocket science and you’ll get incontrovertible evidence of the abuse. And prosecute them, instead of wanting £500 for the matter to go away.

 

[Hadders]

if you’ve found someone fiddling their fares by boarding at Coventry at 0715 but buying fares from Adderley Park, go and actually stop them. It’s not rocket science and you’ll get incontrovertible evidence of the abuse. And prosecute them, instead of wanting £500 for the matter to go away.

Absolutely this!

I'm all for using techniques in the back office to assist in cracking down on fare evasion, but purchasing tickets is not illegal. To secure a conviction WMT has to prove that the tickets have been used illegally and these data trawls do not do this.

 

[35B]

Absolutely this!

I'm all for using techniques in the back office to assist in cracking down on fare evasion, but purchasing tickets is not illegal. To secure a conviction WMT has to prove that the tickets have been used illegally and these data trawls do not do this.

No, but they may have an impact on behaviour. If the cost of evading fares is seen to rise, both in value and probability of being caught, then the scale of the problem may reduce.

That does not excuse the appalling wording or overstatement of likely consequences in this particular communication.

 

[Hadders]

No, but they may have an impact on behaviour. If the cost of evading fares is seen to rise, both in value and probability of being caught, then the scale of the problem may reduce.

That does not excuse the appalling wording or overstatement of likely consequences in this particular communication.

I’m all for effective deterrent but the threats in the emails sent are substantially incorrect.

 

[Titfield]

Presumably these companies have an in house solicitor or retain legal counsel?

In which case a suitably worded to them plus copied to the Solicitors Regulation Authority should "encourage" them to follow the rules.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Presumably these companies have an in house solicitor or retain legal counsel?

In which case a suitably worded to them plus copied to the Solicitors Regulation Authority should "encourage" them to follow the rules.

My feeling is that these letters have been organised entirely at an administrative level: someone senior has required the team to bring in more money, and 'pursuing more cases more aggressively' has been identified as a solution. Then it's been left to the team to get on and do it - almost certainly without any involvement of a legal professional.

Why do I feel this? Because I work in a (non-railway) organisation which sees similar issues - and in my experience it's quite rare for legal professionals to get involved.

Maybe the railway is better organised than my place and it is all down to lawyers not doing their stuff properly. BUt that's not my best guess.

 

[AlterEgo]

My feeling is that these letters have been organised entirely at an administrative level: someone senior has required the team to bring in more money, and 'pursuing more cases more aggressively' has been identified as a solution. Then it's been left to the team to get on and do it - almost certainly without any involvement of a legal professional.

Why do I feel this? Because I work in a (non-railway) organisation which sees similar issues - and in my experience it's quite rare for legal professionals to get involved.

Maybe the railway is better organised than my place and it is all down to lawyers not doing their stuff properly. BUt that's not my best guess.

Almost certainly correct; it is impossible that these letters are being overseen by anyone who either:

- is legally qualified to practice law or even a paralegal, or
- has a school leaver's grasp of written English

It's someone just getting on with it; many of the emails are written in the same native pidgin with the same grammatical errors. If they get a settlement out of someone, great, if not, oh well no bother. It is completely unacceptable and completely incompetent.

 

[Titfield]

My feeling is that these letters have been organised entirely at an administrative level: someone senior has required the team to bring in more money, and 'pursuing more cases more aggressively' has been identified as a solution. Then it's been left to the team to get on and do it - almost certainly without any involvement of a legal professional.

Why do I feel this? Because I work in a (non-railway) organisation which sees similar issues - and in my experience it's quite rare for legal professionals to get involved.

Maybe the railway is better organised than my place and it is all down to lawyers not doing their stuff properly. BUt that's not my best guess.

I do not doubt this (the lack of legal professional involvement) however as it is ultimately a legal matter for which the in house solicitors / retained counsel are "employed" at the highest level then getting them involved may have the greatest chance of matters being put to rights sooner rather than later.

In the light of the Post Office, I would like to think that any organisation who routinely threatens to prosecute individuals would have in place robust measures to ensure compliance. I wouldn't think the Head of WMT would like to be called before a House of Commons Select Committee to be grilled about (a) large scale prosecutions (b) lack of oversight (c) failing to have heeded any lessons which have been broadcast widely in the wake of the PO scandal.

 

[Hadders]

My feeling is that these letters have been organised entirely at an administrative level: someone senior has required the team to bring in more money, and 'pursuing more cases more aggressively' has been identified as a solution. Then it's been left to the team to get on and do it - almost certainly without any involvement of a legal professional.

Why do I feel this? Because I work in a (non-railway) organisation which sees similar issues - and in my experience it's quite rare for legal professionals to get involved.

Maybe the railway is better organised than my place and it is all down to lawyers not doing their stuff properly. BUt that's not my best guess.

This is exactly what I suspect is happening.

Everything will be fine until someone like @KirkstallOne comes along with a tenacious approach and it all comes crashing down.

Well then end up with tens of thousands of cases that have to be undone, money refunded etc etc but the time this comes round GBR (ie the tax payer) will be on the hook for it.

The issue is that many of the people in this situation have been evading their fares, and it is right that these people are bought to account. The problem is train companies must do this within the law as it stands today, not the law they think is is, or want it to be.

Unfortunately there is no effective regulator to get hold of this.

Perhaps there are some journalists out there who might be interested…

 

[KirkstallOne]

Thanks for the mention Hadders. I think a letter to the relevant execs (most importantly to their in house legal counsel who I presume exists and is very remote from these letters, get their fingerprints on it) is a good first step for anyone subjected to this sort of treatment who wants to take it up.

There are three issues on my radar at the moment but I have limited time and energy after all the excitement of last year:

1) These totally overblown letters putting the fear of god into people with talk of fraud act, 10 year sentences etc. based on data trawling exercises. This seems to be a particularly unpleasant example.

2) Northern persisting in claiming that non-payment of appealed penalty fares is a criminal offence. Notably the recent case on the forum - clearly this is still their SOP.

3) Nexus doing the same with what seems to be a very garbled interpretation of the alleged crime (PFN flipover is what they describe them as in some FOI data I have). This is complicated by the fact that they have their own byelaws which are not listed in the critical section of the Penalty Fares Regulations. Importantly these are not strict liability offences. There are many thousands of these.

We also await the results of the ORR’s review (report went to HM Gov last month I believe) and the review of private prosecutions and the Single Justice Procedure.

 

[enyoueffsea]

There is a very real risk these emails will be sent to people who have never evaded the correct fare and they will be frightened enough to pay up without questioning.

If you have someone who buys their own tickets, using a railcard they correctly own, but also buy tickets for a friend/family member without a railcard, the frequent changes of to/from a railcard would trigger in this data trawl.

It’s not far away from the spam emails you see flying around, particularly with how badly they are written.

 

[Hadders]

There is a very real risk these emails will be sent to people who have never evaded the correct fare and they will be frightened enough to pay up without questioning.

If you have someone who buys their own tickets, using a railcard they correctly own, but also buy tickets for a friend/family member without a railcard, the frequent changes of to/from a railcard would trigger in this data trawl.

It’s not far away from the spam emails you see flying around, particularly with how badly they are written.

Absolutely. For example, we regularly see emails from WMT requesting evidence of railcards going back years. There is absolutely no requirement for a railcard to be kept agter it has expired yet the way these emails are written you would think otherwise.