The father who spent £12,000 on legal fight
IT has cost managing director Jon Platt up to £12,000 to fight the landmark case – despite the initial fixed penalty costing just £60.
The father of three spent two years battling the Isle of Wight council after being fined and prosecuted for taking his sevenyear- old daughter to Disney World during school term time.
Having gained a legion of supporters on social media, Mr Platt yesterday revealed he had afforded the legal fees through crowd funding and legal aid.
But it emerged the 46-year-old managing director had also been able to draw upon a wealth of savings he accrued after starting a PPI claims company from scratch nearly a decade ago.
He set up JPM Partnerships in 2006 out of his detached fourbedroom house where he lived with his second wife Lindsay Platt, 46, in the village of Bembridge on the Isle of Wight.
According to the company’s website, the business grew quickly and now claims to recover nearly £4million a year for its clients, with 20 staff and two offices on the island.
In 2015 a family holiday turned into a personal crusade that would take Mr Platt all the way to the Supreme Court.
In April that year, he took his daughter to Florida – believing it would be better for her development than staying at school, where she had an ‘exemplary’ attendance record. Two of his children attended the £4,000-a- term independent Ryde School and were allowed to travel, but his youngest daughter who went to a state school was not.
Yesterday, Mr Platt was joined at the Supreme Court by his third wife Sally Barclay, 46.
The couple married last June in a lavish ceremony on the Greek island of Santorini.
Mr Platt sold his former marital home for £770,000 in 2014 – and now lives in a £ 415,000 detached house in the small Edwardian resort of Seaview on the Isle of Wight.
He married his first wife Juliet Bird, 46, in 1996. She now runs kennels on the island. They had a son together three years later who is now aged 18.
After his first divorce, keen skier Mr Platt married second wife Lindsay in the mid-noughties, around the time when he set up his business.
The couple had two daughters together. The youngest – whose school attendance in 2015 the row revolved around – was then seven and at a state primary.
Mr Platt, who has been taking a law degree at Portsmouth University, has now been ordered to return to magistrates’ court over the case.