Wagn calls for ASBOs in a bid to deter fare dodgers

TRAIN operator Wagn, which runs services between Peterborough and Kings Cross, including Huntingdon and St Neots, is so fed up with fare dodgers that it is asking Huntingdonshire Magistrates to impose ASBOs on the worst offenders. Since the company began

TRAIN operator Wagn, which runs services between Peterborough and Kings Cross, including Huntingdon and St Neots, is so fed up with fare dodgers that it is asking Huntingdonshire Magistrates to impose ASBOs on the worst offenders.

Since the company began to tighten up on travellers who repeatedly forget to trouble booking office staff with the fare for their journeys, it has been noted some names appear regularly on lists of defendants required to answer ticketless-travel charges before the district's Bench.

The company was unable to serve some summonses for repeated offences due to be heard last week because the alleged fare-dodgers were already in prison in connection with other offences.

A Wagn spokesman said that some Benches - not Huntingdonshire - had failed to take fare-dodging seriously. The offence costs the railways around £25 million every year in south-east England alone, money that has to be made up by honest passengers who buy valid tickets.

"Some magistrates do not consider fraud and damage to trains sufficient reason to grant Anti-Social Behaviour Orders on their own but, when they are taken together with other offences, they are sufficient to trigger an ASBO," said Wagn's Graham Bashford.

He would not be drawn on whether the company would ask the High Court for injunctions to bar serial fare-dodgers from trains.

Further offences would put fraudsters at risk of immediate imprisonment for contempt of court.

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