A judge asked to consider the legality of prosecutions by railway operators using the single justice procedure has declared all prosecutions under two subsections of the Railways Act invalid.
Senior district judge and chief magistrate for England and Wales Paul Goldspring said railway operators Northern Trains Limited and Greater Anglia had conceded that the SJP should not have been used to prosecute offences contrary to section 5(1) or 5(3) of the Regulations of the Railway Act (RRA) 1889. Fines and costs paid following these convictions should be refunded.
Section 5(1) – fail to produce a ticket for inspection – is a summary only non-imprisonable offence under the RRA while section 5(3) covers offences in which someone does not pay their full fare or gives a railway company officer a false name or address. The offence under section 5(1), the judgment acknowledged, is not included within the definition of a railway offence.
HMCTS and the judge had been asked to review six test cases for the purposes of considering and deciding what the correct legal remedy is.
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