FATHER WHO REFUSED TO PAY £60 SCHOOL FINE APPEARS AT COURT

FATHER WHO REFUSED TO PAY £60 SCHOOL FINE APPEARS AT COURT



A father has lost a two-year legal battle after refusing to pay a fine for taking his daughter on a term-time holiday in a case that will cost the taxpayer £200,000.

Jon Platt, 46, was convicted of failing to secure his daughter's regular attendance at school in a hearing at Isle of Wight Magistrates' Court - where the case was returned after the businessman lost a landmark legal battle at the Supreme Court earlier this year.

But it wasn't the end of his legal ordeal with officials slapping two parking tickets on his family's vehicles during the court hearing.

He couldn't pay the fee because of a faulty parking machine and has now been ordered to cough up £120 which - perhaps unsurprisingly - he does not plan to dispute.

It is the same amount that he was ordered to pay by Isle of Wight Council for taking his daughter out of school two years ago after failing to fork out the initial £60 fine.

Platt told MailOnline: 'Do you think I'm going to appeal those after what's happened in the last two years? Am I buggery. i'm going to pay them and shut up.'

Giving the judgment today, magistrate Jeannie Walker said: 'The circumstances of this case fall squarely into that breach of school rules.

She added: 'The council has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the child was not attending school regularly on those dates of the holiday.'

Platt was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £2,000 costs plus a £20 surcharge.

The father said he has spent close to £30,000 on fighting the case, with additional funds covered by legal aid.



Figures disclosed to the Press Association under Freedom of Information laws have shown the Department for Education had spent close to £140,000 pursuing the legal action.

Taxpayers will pick up an additional £60,000 for Platt's costs that have been granted by the courts.



He told MailOnline: 'It's been incredibly stressful and it's taken up huge amounts of time.

'The ball is very much in my court but I'm not going to appeal - I'm going what the Isle of Wight council should have done.



'I'm going to stand here now and say I disagree fundamentally, I think they erred in law, that we have grounds for appeal - but Jon Platt isn't going to appeal that decision.

'I'm going to respect it, accept it, pay the £2,000 in costs and put it behind me.'

'This is over £200,000 that the taxpyaer has spent and I feel bad - but that was not my choice.

'I've had to burn about 30k of my own money defending a pretty reasonable position.

'I don't want to waste any more of my money on this, it's been a very expensive process and somewhat undermined my faith in the justice system.

'The cost of winning at the Magistrate's Court is that you're going to burn a fortune.

'The only people who can afford to plead not guilty to even low level offences are people who have earned no money because those people aren't going to pay the cost of the case - but if you've worked hard all your life it could be ruinous.'

Platt now fears the case will have implications for parents around the country.

He said: 'There were around 8.5million unauthorised absences around the country in a single term.

'Every single one of those is, if the headteacher decided that's what the school rules should be, an unauthorised breach, all 8.5million of those are criminal offences.'



Summing up his case, Ben Rich, for the Council, said the Supreme Court had ruled that regular attendance means in according with the rules of the school.

The council has proved that the youngster did not attend on the relevant dates and was on an unauthorised holiday, he said.

'The Isle of Wight has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is guilty of the offence.'

Platt's lawyer Paul Greatorex QC said: 'The prosecution has not produced any evidence as to what the school rules are.

'There's nothing in writing. What are the school rules? Who knows? They are not there.'



Platt's barrister had also argued that his case came under one of a number of statutory exceptions which says that a pupil has not failed to attend school regularly if he or she lives more than two miles from their school and the council has failed to fulfil its duty to provide transport, meet the costs of transport or offer a move to a nearer school.

Platt told the court that after he split from his daughter's mother in 2013, the youngster spent half her time at his house, around 3.6 miles from the school.

He argued he had not been offered transport or help.

The court also heard that Platt had not applied for assistance.

Platt, who took his daughter on the Florida trip without the school's permission, was prosecuted by Isle of Wight Council after he refused to pay a penalty - which turned into a major legal battle as it was dragged through the courts.

At the Supreme Court hearing in April, five justices unanimously allowed an appeal by education chiefs against an earlier ruling that Platt had not acted unlawfully.