Guidance- Fare Evasion Prosecutions To Be Quashed

This blog update has been written as several clients have heard the news of the judgement that some convictions were brought incorrectly through the single justice procedure and as such they will be quashed. The case is Norther Trains Limited v Mark Ballington and Jade Wylie, Northern Train Limited v Sarah Cooke, Greater Anglia v Joshua Baggaley, Paul Jenkins and Sarah McKenzie which was heard in August 2024.

We are receiving a lot of enquiries as to whether past settlements can be set aside. This blog is to assist in your understanding as to the position.

The Court found it was improper that the single justice procedure was used for offences prosecuted under Section 5 (1) and 5(3) of the Regulation of the Railways Act 1889.

A single justice procedure notice is a document with several pages which requires you to plead guilty or not guilty on the papers. It does not require court attendance and you can be sentenced on the papers too as many were.

Please note that any prosecution brought under a Byelaw offence is valid and therefore has no relevance to this judgement. Also if you were prosecuted under the Regulation of the Railways Act 1889 and you received a court requisition i.e. not a single justice procedure notice but a regular court summons then your case also has no relevance to the judgement.

The decision was made to declare those cases a nullity and so the Courts will contact all those affected and ensure the case is declared a nullity and any fines and costs paid to the court be paid back to the Defendants. The cases will not be prosecuted again as they are out of time given there is a six month time limit to bring such cases.

Accordingly, it is our view that you will not need a Solicitor for this process, and that you can either contact the Court yourself to speed up the process or wait to be contacted. If any person who was convicted improperly has changed addresses, then they should update their contact details with the Court.

Samir Moftah is a Director at Manak Solicitors and a successful fare evasion solicitor who has over ten years of experience dealing with fare evasion and has settled thousands of cases. He has very high success rates and is able to assist clients resolve fare evasion cases. Samir also has hundreds of five star reviews on Google and Trustpilot of satisfied clients.

Please do contact us if you require any assistance.