\n<\/p>\n
A non-smoker was convicted at a magistrates court after Manchester city council accused him of dropping a cigarette butt in the city centre \u2013 even though he was hundreds of miles away, arranging a family funeral at the time.<\/p>\n
Steve Jones, a 53-year-old teacher, lives 200 miles away in Teddington, Greater London, has only been to Manchester three times, and doesn\u2019t smoke.<\/p>\n
He told the council it was a case of mistaken identity and he had not dropped any litter, but the prosecution went ahead regardless in his absence, and he received a collection order in the post for \u00a3433, which included a fine and costs.<\/p>\n
In July, he was sent a pack of evidence by Manchester city council, including a letter that said: \u201cYou have been charged with an offence of dropping litter\u201d, and that a single justice procedure notice had been issued by the local authority in March.<\/p>\n
It included a copy of a fixed-penalty notice for \u00a3150 for allegedly dropping litter outside the H&M store on Market Street on the afternoon of 14 December last year, which warned that the maximum fine would rise to \u00a32,500 if the case ended up in the magistrates court.<\/p>\n
The letter gave Jones 21 days to respond, warning that after that the court would hear the case in his absence, and he may be convicted and fined.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I definitely wasn\u2019t there, because my father-in-law died on 13 December and I was in Maidstone at a funeral directors,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
The address on the fixed-penalty notice was one in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, and while the birthday on the ticket matched Jones\u2019s, the year of birth was 10 years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got the incorrect date of birth, then it\u2019s got a description of me, which says I have hat hair, which I found quite odd,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what hat hair means, and I don\u2019t really have that much hair, because my hair is sort of number two all over, because I don\u2019t have much of it left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones contacted the council to explain their error, and his email correspondence with council officers \u201cwent back and forth and back and forth for ages\u201d, he said, \u201cand then they had to go and find the guy\u2019s camera evidence and that took a few days, and then eventually they realised that it wasn\u2019t me\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want this on my record,\u201d Jones added, \u201cand especially as I\u2019m a teacher too. I don\u2019t want to have this coming up in the future because someone\u2019s not reading the correct details and not inputting the correct details.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said he initially struggled to get the council to provide a written apology, but had thought the matter was closed after he received an email apologising for the \u201cadministrative error\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, Jones then received a further letter in the post, dated 28 August, saying he had been convicted and fined. \u201cI just find it incredible that I\u2019ve been convicted in my absence,\u201d he said. \u2018\u201cI mean, that sounds really serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t been convicted of anything [before],\u201d he added, \u201cso it\u2019s like, blimey, that\u2019s really heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones is also concerned the same thing might happen to somebody else who may not have the capacity to challenge the fine. \u201cIf that had been sent to someone who was elderly, or with other needs, I could see how that could be really quite stressful and really it could cause a lot of pain and agitation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jones said that in his initial dealings with the council he felt \u201cannoyance, more than anything\u201d, but now he was feeling \u201creally frustrated\u201d after the prosecution went ahead anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really serious for me,\u201d he said, \u201cand I don\u2019t feel confident that they are going to overturn it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Manchester city council spokesperson said: \u201cThe council is now doing everything in its power to have the conviction set aside at the next available opportunity to avoid any action being taken against Mr Jones to recover the penalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do, of course, apologise unreservedly for any distress or inconvenience caused to Mr Jones.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A non-smoker was convicted at a magistrates court after Manchester city council accused him of dropping a cigarette butt in the city centre \u2013 even though he was hundreds of miles away, arranging a family funeral at the time. Steve Jones, a 53-year-old teacher, lives 200 miles away in Teddington, Greater London, has only been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[8045,7900,4571,2861,1570,11954],"class_list":{"0":"post-19504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-butt","9":"tag-cigarette","10":"tag-dropping","11":"tag-fined","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-nonsmoker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}