Staff assisting passenger with mobility aid onto train with ramp deployed at a station

UK: More reliable and consistent assistance needs to be provided for disabled passengers, the Office of Rail & Road said when it published its 2023 annual rail consumer report.

ORR found that when passengers receive assistance there is high satisfaction, up from 86% to 90% year-on-year, but there were still too many accounts of passengers not receiving help that they had booked.

A survey of more than 8 100 passengers covering the period 2022-23 found:

  • satisfaction with the booking process was 94% — telephone is the most common method for booking assistance (65% of bookings) and those passengers showed the highest levels of satisfaction;
  • satisfaction with the assistance received at the station rose to 95%;
  • the proportion of passengers reporting that they received all of the assistance they had booked rose from 76% last year to 81%. This figure varied depending on the needs of the passenger: 66% of those with a physical disability who booked assistance getting to the wheelchair area reported receiving all the assistance they had booked;
  • the proportion of passengers reporting that none of the assistance they had booked was received was 8%, down from 11% last year.

ORR said there has been a 74% increase in the number of bookings for passenger assistance this year, and the number of Disabled Persons’ Railcards in circulation is up 11% from last year, suggesting that more disabled people are returning to the railways.

In the coming year ORR’s consumer team will focus on key areas of concern including the reliability of assistance, compliance with the handover protocol to improve staff communication between stations, the reliability of station lifts and information provided to passengers on lift availability, and disabled people’s experiences of operators’ complaints processes.

‘There are still too many instances where assistance fails and when this happens the impact on disabled passengers can be significant, creating unnecessary anxiety and frustration’, said Stephanie Tobyn, ORR Director of Strategy, Policy & Reform, on July 12.

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