13 November 2023 •
This week is International Fraud Awareness Week – a global initiative to minimise the impact of fraud by promoting anti-fraud awareness and education – and to demonstrate its commitment to the campaign, rail operator c2c has reiterated its continued focus on reducing and eliminating fare evasion across the network, whilst announcing it has generated more than £250,000 in payments so far this year.
c2c’s Revenue Protection and Security teams, operating in partnership with the British Transport Police, work night and day across the length of the c2c network to catch and apprehend those travelling without a valid ticket for their journey.
Since the beginning of the year, c2c has submitted 447 cases for prosecution and issued 3198 individual penalty fares. Of the 447 cases, 319 have already led to successful prosecutions and those remaining are still to go to court or pending a result. In addition, hundreds more cases of ticketing fraud and fare evasion are currently being investigated and dealt with by c2c’s in-house Revenue Protection team.
Iain Palmer, c2c’s Head of Revenue Protection & Security, said:
“Fare evasion is a criminal offence and costs the rail industry millions of pounds every single year. It is also a contributor to anti-social behaviour across the rail network.
“Our Revenue Protection and security teams have been working hard to crack down on those travelling on c2c without a valid ticket, and we are delighted to have reached the £250k milestone having hit £100k back in August.
“But the hard work doesn’t stop there. Fare and ticket evasion on the c2c network, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is a criminal offence and we will always look to prosecute repeat offenders.”
Iain added:
“Our Revenue Protection, Fraud and security teams work both in uniform and plain clothes in order to monitor and catch fare evaders, whether they are traveling without a ticket, have a ticket for part of their journey or are using c2c without paying to connect with TfL and London Underground services.
“The impact of fare evasion is also felt by our law-abiding fare paying customers. It’s simply not fair or right that some people feel they should not have to pay for our services when the vast majority of our loyal customers do.”
- An individual has recently paid back £2352.20 in unpaid fares having travelled from Southend East to West Ham 142 times on a short ticket. This person was spotted by c2c Revenue Protection Officers tapping a contactless card at West Ham station having just travelled on a c2c train.
- Another individual is currently paying back £2462.40 having been caught regularly travelling from Benfleet to West Ham on a ticket which was only valid to Pitsea.
We are in the process of increasing the number of Revenue Protection Officers present on trains across the route, but you may not notice them as not all will be in uniform. If you know of a fare evader or see people cheating the system and want to let us know, then please contact us via c2c’s Twitter direct messaging platform.