Accessible transport: legal obligations

Aside from the structural legal issues, it is clear from the evidence that myriad specific practical issues need to be addressed, across all transport modes and relating to all kinds of disability, to improve compliance and practice on a daily basis. We will seek to hold the Department for Transport, local authorities and providers to account for addressing these issues. The meaningful involvement of disabled people must be central to the work of operators and government at all levels in solving these problems, and such involvement must be adequately funded, planned and supported. (Conclusion, Paragraph 38) From policy aspiration to implementation: where do things go wrong?

The 2018 Inclusive Transport Strategy set a goal of “creating a transport system offering equal access for disabled people by 2030”. Regardless of the status of individual actions set out in that Strategy, it is evident that the overall goal will not be achieved on that timescale. A positive direction of travel is not enough—and, indeed, we have seen progress go backwards in some respects since the Covid-19 pandemic. There needs to be more emphasis on a concrete delivery plan to achieve the overall outcome of closing the accessibility gap, rather than administrative actions which, while positive in themselves, risk adding up to no more than the sum of their parts. (Conclusion, Paragraph 45)

The Government should publish within 12 months a new Inclusive Transport Strategy. This strategy must have a stretching ambition, but one underpinned by metrics, actions, costings and milestones which clearly map out a practical pathway to deliver on that ambition. It must be cross-modal and closely linked to the Government’s promised Integrated Transport Strategy, but a specific focus on accessibility is needed. (Recommendation, Paragraph 46) 74

Decision-makers too often deem accessibility to be in conflict with, and less important than, other policy goals, technical requirements or cost pressures. The Government’s starting point must be that accessibility has to be delivered, not that it will only be delivered if other factors do not get in the way. (Conclusion, Paragraph 58)

As part of a new Inclusive Transport Strategy, the Government must set out concrete timescales for achieving independent accessibility across the rail network, and commit to setting out within 12 months a road map for how to meet those timescales. This road map must inform the rolling stock, station and network enhancements strategies of the Department and, when it is operational, Great British Railways. (Recommendation, Paragraph 59)

Progress in implementing agreed accessibility upgrades at stations has been too halting, and delivery too slow and costly. The Department for Transport and its agencies and partners should consider adopting a different commissioning approach based on a rolling programme of rapid interventions, as opposed to individual station projects commissioned separately. By creating certainty and consistency for contractors, this should speed up delivery and lower costs. (Recommendation, Paragraph 60)

Station accessibility audit information must be published in full within two months of this report to permit independent scrutiny of progress, the resources required and any decisions made to rule out works at particular locations. In its Inclusive Transport Strategy, the Department should commit to compiling and publishing in open data format a register of key accessibility assets on the rail and bus network which can be drawn upon by journey planning tools. (Recommendation, Paragraph 61)

The seemingly routine, everyday nature of assistance failures on the rail network is unacceptable. Accessibility must not be viewed through the same lens as customer service, where less than 100 per cent performance is considered normal. Accessibility failures should be vanishingly rare, not commonplace, but too few actors in the system currently behave as if that is the case. A change of mindset throughout the transport system is urgently needed, recognising that accessibility is both a non-negotiable matter of human rights and discrimination, and a health and safety issue. (Conclusion, Paragraph 66)

The Government’s new strategy for inclusive transport should set out what practical measures it will take to embed the principle that every instance of not meeting accessibility obligations constitutes a serious failure for which operators and service providers will be held accountable. This must include measures to collect comprehensive data on such failures. (Recommendation, Paragraph 67) 75

Despite all the mechanisms in place to safeguard accessibility, proposals which risked significantly damaging disabled people’s access to the rail network by closing hundreds of ticket offices were published in 2023 and only withdrawn after a huge response to public consultation. This was a waste of time and resources and it resulted in a burden being placed once again on disabled people themselves to advocate for their needs. (Conclusion, Paragraph 74)

The Department must set out in response to this report how it will change its processes in order to build accessibility into decision-making processes both internally and at agencies overseen by the Department, and how it will ensure that internal checks and balances for accessibility are effective. Relying on consultations to highlight problems after policies and interventions have already been designed is not acceptable. (Recommendation, Paragraph 75)

We welcome the aspiration expressed by the Department in the last Parliament to involve the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee more thoroughly in the policy-making process beyond policy specific to accessibility. This was long overdue, considering that DPTAC was established in 1985. (Conclusion, Paragraph 76)

The Department should share with this Committee a work plan mapping out DPTAC’s involvement in upcoming policy decisions, and publish quarterly reports detailing the impact that DPTAC has had on the Department’s decision-making. (Recommendation, Paragraph 77)

The establishment of Great British Railways presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix accessibility as a core goal and responsibility of the railway and as a guiding principle for its decision-making. The opportunity must not be squandered, and we urge the Government in bringing forward its legislation to consider the full range of mechanisms that could be used to achieve this. (Conclusion, Paragraph 79)

Operators are at pains to emphasise the complexity of the systems they work within, especially when it comes to journeys involving multiple organisations or modes. But people are entitled to expect to be able to make complicated journeys to get where they need to go; disabled people are no different. Systems and staffing must be able to cope with complexity. Similarly, resilience to external shocks—such as the sudden increase in air travel after the ending of pandemic restrictions—must be sufficient to cope with accessibility requirements. (Conclusion, Paragraph 83)

It is not sufficient for training to be delivered on disability awareness, accessibility and preventing discrimination: the training must be of a guaranteed minimum standard and proven to be effective in improving outcomes. The Department for Transport should, with the active 76 participation of disabled people, establish an expert unit to review within 12 months the training packages currently available across modes to identify, benchmark and standardise best practice, and conduct ongoing quality assurance. (Recommendation, Paragraph 84)

The presence of staff is often a crucial determinant of the ability of disabled people to travel. Ahead of the establishment of Great British Railways and nationalisation of operating companies, the Department must be prepared to intervene where necessary to ensure that changes to staffing levels on the rail network do not have the effect of reducing access and inclusion. When legislating for the creation of Great British Railways, it must take steps to ensure that that body gives accessibility appropriate weight in future decision-making about the number, roles and location of staff. (Recommendation, Paragraph 87) The burden on individuals

We welcome the focus in the Government’s rail reform consultation paper on streamlining, consolidating and strengthening powers for protecting passenger interests, resolving complaints and monitoring rights and standards. However, the focus on accessibility in the consultation document appears relatively weak in comparison to the severity of the problem. It will be necessary for the passenger watchdog to have substantial expertise in and resources dedicated to accessibility and inclusion if it is to make a significant difference to the everyday experience of disabled travellers. We draw attention to our recommendation later in this report that the Department assess whether a single body with responsibility for enforcing the rights of disabled travellers across transport modes would be a more effective model for bringing about change than mode-specific and general passenger rights bodies. (Conclusion, Paragraph 96)

An unreasonable burden is currently placed on disabled people themselves in holding transport operators and authorities to account for fulfilling their duties. Legal action is rarely a practical option for most individuals, so it is especially important that complaints processes are made more accessible and effective. The user should not have to be an expert either in the law or in organisational structures across varied transport modes to know whether they have a valid complaint, to whom it should be addressed, how to contact that body and how to escalate the complaint if necessary. In the long term, there may be a case for rationalising the number of organisations who deal with transport accessibility complaints, but in the meantime, a unified ‘front of house’ service could make a meaningful difference to users. We note plans to establish a passenger standards authority in the rail sector, but this covers just one mode of transport and will not be an accessibility-specific body. (Conclusion, Paragraph 104) 77

We recommend that the Department for Transport work with disabled people’s organisations to design a unified service to receive and triage accessibility complaints or reports of failures, ensure that they reach the relevant operator, authority or regulator, and follow them up if not resolved. Such a service would require an investment in knowledgeable and resourceful staff and in effective and accessible advertising. This should be in place within 12 months. Data about reported problems gathered through this platform should be made available to operators, regulators, campaigners, parliamentarians and the general public. (Recommendation, Paragraph 105)

Users of such a service must receive assurance that information about complaints and failures is being aggregated and used proactively to improve systems and services, not just to effect redress to the individual. In order to achieve this, the Department should: • analyse information gathered through this mechanism both to hold operators to account for resolving specific problems promptly, and to enable systemic issues and trends to be identified and addressed; and • report quarterly on what issues have been resolved and services improved as a result. (Recommendation, Paragraph 106)

As one way of reducing the need for complaints in the first place, we recommend that all licensed transport providers be required to appoint an accessible transport champion with the specific responsibility for navigating journeys on a regular basis to assess conditions against a checklist, as a lean and rapid way of assessing the passenger experience. Champions should have an understanding of accessibility needs on a pan-disability basis, and personal experience of navigating transport as a disabled person or carer. (Recommendation, Paragraph 107) The legislative framework

The landscape of legislative and regulatory requirements for transport accessible is overly complicated and fragmented and needs to adapt to changing uses of transport. This prevents both operators and travellers readily understanding rights and obligations, and makes redress harder to access. (Conclusion, Paragraph 123)

The Department for Transport should lead a review of transport accessibility legislation in collaboration with the Office for Equality and Opportunity, and with meaningful involvement and leadership by disabled people, to assess how it could be streamlined, clarified and updated, and whether it should be underpinned by greater specification of the standards providers must work to. Specification of standards should include matters currently subject 78 only to the Public Sector Equality Duty or the duty to make reasonable adjustments. The review should be completed within 12 months of the publication of this report. (Recommendation, Paragraph 124) Regulation and enforcement

The case of e-scooters demonstrates the importance of ensuring that enforcement is not an afterthought when new elements are introduced into transport networks. Should the Government eventually seek to legislate for permanent e-scooter rental schemes or use of privately-owned e-scooters on public roads, it must not rely on saying that it is up to local authorities or police forces to use their powers to manage detrimental impacts on disabled people without proving that this can be effective. It must present evidence from the extensive rental trial schemes demonstrating that it is possible for operators and local authorities to manage such schemes in a way which does not further impair disabled people’s safe and confident access to the street environment. This may require the Government to make additional resources available for enforcement. (Recommendation, Paragraph 157)

The confidence that regulators evince in informal methods of enforcement and its deterrent effect on other operators is not justified by the experience of travellers. We recognise that reputational incentives such as performance rankings have a part to play, as do informal collaboration and education, but failure to adhere to legal requirements demands more robust and immediate responses. Thresholds for taking formal enforcement action are in general set too high, requiring evidence of repeated and enduring failures. As a result, the number of formal actions that have been taken in each sector is so low that they can generally be recalled individually by enforcement bodies. This cannot be right when disabled travellers themselves typically lose count of the number of times they encounter serious problems. This results in a significant enforcement gap, and operators getting away with repeated poor practice. (Conclusion, Paragraph 164)

There appears to be no effective or easily available enforcement route for accessibility in the street environment in particular. There is instead a reliance on upstream measures such as local authorities following good practice, consulting effectively and having “due regard” under the Public Sector Equality Duty, but these appear insufficient to ensure good outcomes for accessibility. (Conclusion, Paragraph 165)

The Secretary of State should immediately give regulators an explicit mandate, backed by the necessary resources, to be far more proactive within the scope of their current powers in identifying and enforcing against breaches of accessibility law and regulations by operators. The Department 79 should set annual reporting requirements for regulators to publish updates on the number of breaches of accessibility laws, regulations and guidance that they have a) identified, b) addressed through informal action and c) taken formal enforcement action against. This transparency would enable the public to gauge the success of a new stance of proactive enforcement. (Recommendation, Paragraph 166)

The Department should within 12 months review the roles of enforcement bodies with responsibilities for transport accessibility and prepare to legislate where necessary: • to ensure that all have consistent and sufficient powers at their disposal, and have both the powers and resources needed to intervene formally at lower thresholds than is currently the case; • to assess whether such bodies should be given the power and resources to act on breaches of the Equality Act general duties and the Public Sector Equality Duty in matters within their remit, in order to facilitate swifter resolution of breaches and take some of the burden of legal action away from individuals; • to ensure that no transport mode, including the street environment, is left uncovered by an effective enforcement regime; and • to assess whether a single body with responsibility for enforcement across transport modes would be more effective at asserting the rights of disabled travellers and bringing about systemic change. (Conclusion, Paragraph 167) 80