Mum Fined £80 For Taking Son To Disneyland In Term Time Now Facing £800 Penalty
A mum from Blackpool is facing an £800 fine for taking her son to Disneyland during term time, after failing to pay the initial £80 fine.
Jasmine Moore, who’s on Universal Credit, says she wasn’t aware that she’d been fined after she took her six-year-old son Luca out of St Cuthbert’s Academy in October to join his great-grandma on the “holiday of a lifetime” to Disneyland Paris.
She insist that the first she heard of the fine was when bailiffs got in touch demanding she pay £768 to settle the debt, a near-100% increase on the original £80 fine!
Enforcement agents from Marson Recovery have warned Jasmine that if she doesn’t pay the fee – which is now considered an unpaid ‘criminal fine’ – they will enter her home and remove her belongings.
Jasmine consulted a debt helpline and was advised that she best come to an arrangement with the enforcement agency, otherwise the debt will continue to grow and she’d be receiving a knock at her door very soon. She then offered to pay what she could (no word on the amount) and was turned down and told she’d have to pay the full balance of £768.
Luca’s grandma Sharon, who lives in Lincolnshire, says it’s ‘outrageously unjust’ that an £80 school fine can rise to nearly £800 in a matter of months. Which is a fair point.
She told the Blackpool Gazette: “This is way too extreme and Dickensian. I got on the phone to the bailiffs straight away and tried explaining Jasmine’s situation. There’s just no way she can pay that. But they are a nasty piece of work and would not listen and put the phone down on me.
“We expected a fine but nothing came. The school said nothing to her, but if you read up on school fines on Facebook, it’s the same all over. They take months or not at all. That’s a flaw in itself. It’s tragic what this does to families that only wish to make happy memories.
“We have checked all of Jasmine’s mail and cannot find anything to do with fines from the school or anything from a court. Just the bailiff notification.
“Surely there should have been some notice before it got to this stage, where we have bailiffs banging on the door demanding money she doesn’t have with their aggressive attitude and intimidating behaviour.
“All this just to punish already impoverished families that basically cannot afford to go anywhere in school holidays? Just for a few days at Disneyland?
“I would have paid the fine if I had known about it. Jasmine is on benefits and would also have told the court of her circumstances given the chance. Children should not have to witness bailiffs at their door. None of this makes sense and just heaps more anxiety on already struggling families.
“And what are they going to take from her? She barely has anything as it is, just the essentials. Are they going to leave her, a struggling young mum, with absolutely nothing? What will she be left with?”
Well, fair play to grandma for doing all the talking on behalf of Jasmine and the family. It does seem extremely odd that the school won’t have informed Jasmine about the £80 fine and that she only found out about it once it had hit £800. If that’s true, then surely she has a case to remove the extra debt accrued and just pay the original fine? Unless the school can prove that they sent her correspondence or had some kind of contact with her about the fine.
There’s also the question of whether parents should be fined in the first place for taking their kids to Disneyland during term time? After all, it is a lot cheaper to go to Disneyland during term time than it is during the holidays. Especially for people like Jasmine on Universal Credit who also need to get their nails, eyelashes and fake tan done, aside from booking dream family holidays to Disneyland.
Come to think of it, the £80 would’ve been totally worth it if you consider the savings they made by booking the holiday during term time. Just a shame she apparently wasn’t aware of the fine until it was too late. Oh well. At least little man had a blast:
For the Mickey Mouse mascot who ‘pulled a knife on tourists who refused to pay for a picture’, click HERE.
