Referred to Magistrates Court for unpaid school attendance fine we didn’t receive!

[AdamantEve]

Quick summary: have two DC who we took out of school in the summer as unauthorised abesence. One child was KS2 and one in Reception.
A fine was received for child in KS2 but not for my younger child. I phoned the council to pay the fine and queried if I should have received one for the other child. Their response was “If you’ve not received a letter then don’t worry about it” so I presumed maybe they were classed as below compulsory school age and the school hadn’t requested a fine.

Months have passed and have just received a letter from the council stating due to non-payment of DC2 fine (which was never received), the matter has been referred to magistrates court! The number on the letter is for the council and they have been closed all weekend, any advice on what to say to them tomorrow to address this? I am about to apply for a mortgage so REALLY don’t need a CCJ on my record. Would they have a recording of my phone call to prove I queried it?

First of all was your child of compulsory school age ie. Was it the term after their 5th birthday?

And you won't get a CCJ as it's it's a criminal offence under the anti social behaviour act.

How did they send you the fine? Post or email, or some other method?

If they were under compulsory school age at the time of the absence they can't fine you for it. It's not advised but it isn't against the law as they don't have to be there by law.

Yes they became of compulsory age the term I took them out of school but I wasn’t sure if maybe the school just treated all Reception age the same given that the Council who issue the fines told me not to worry about it, I assumed that anything showing due to be paid would have shown on their system when I rang to pay the fine I received but obviously it doesn’t work like that!
So what could actually happen in this case then, does anyone know? It’s so frustrating and I wish I had phoned again and checked with a second person now.

The fine we received came by post.

Agree, you won’t get a CCJ as they are issued by County Courts, not Magistrates’ Courts.

I didn’t know it was classed as a criminal offence though. Would that show up on a PNC search?

It's under section 444 I believe. But you need to answer the csa question!

Yes, they should have notes on record stating you called and queried it - from experience though they don't always do this and it can affect you if that call handler on that day decides not to! I'd explain the situation, that you never received anything, that you did call to ask and I'd think that since you paid the other fine it's obvious you would have paid both if you had knowledge of it.

When was your child's 5th birthday? When was the holiday?

Hi arnoldbee yes they were of CSA I answered that above. It’s only this year our school/council have been fining so I honestly didn’t know if they treated reception differently and just assumed they must given the lack of fine and the council saying don’t worry if no letter has arrived!

I wouldn't get worked up about this - if you just explain that you didn't receive anything and offer to pay over the phone they'll probably just accept it and take you off the court list for that day.

I was imagining I’d phone tomorrow and they’d agree it was their mistake/they could see I’d advised them I’d only received one fine and would just let me pay it but now I’m worrying it’s going to escalate

I'm a magistrate by the way so have experience of these things and normally the council would much rather sort things out in advance than drag you into court and waste everyone's time!

I hope so Nowofthemonth

Quite a few people don't get csa quite right so it's important to clarify. Join the fb group against school holiday fines/Pcns as their advice is amazing.

Thanks ArnoldBee I’ll take a look. I’ll update tomorrow after I’ve spoken to council in case anyone’s interested in what they say, hopefully they’re reasonable.

You could ask to make a statutory declaration that you didn't receive the fine.

I don't think you can make a stat dec for this, MargotMoon. The council issues penalty notices, not fines. You make a stat dec when there were court proceedings against you that you were unaware of and if the declaration is granted, those original proceedings start again. The penalty notice was before those proceedings. It's a bit like a fixed penalty for a road traffic offence...

But definitely worth going back to the council AdamantEve and asking it to drop the case given the circumstances.

@thereisnorinbath Ah yes you are right, sorry I skim read the first post and thought from the title that it was at court stage

If anyone would like an update - the council were thankfully very reasonable and have allowed me to pay the penalty charge as it would have been if we had paid in the first 21 days of receiving the notice. I was worried as google told me that after 28 days pass with no payment you will go to court regardless of mitigating reasons, so I am thankful it didn’t end up like that.

That’s good.

Good news! Glad they took a sensible approach