Doug Paulley's blog

disability, data protection, activism and other such

“Wheelchair accessible” National Express coaches

Posted on by Doug Paulley

There’s a coach service that stops in Wetherby, my home town, once a day in each direction, to Newcastle upon Tyne via Durham and southbound to Nottingham via Leeds and Sheffield. I thought I’d try it out, because National Express now claim that “virtually all of our fleet now has a passenger lift at the front entrance to make travelling with us as accessible as possible.” But I note that “We must therefore assess all wheelchairs to see if they are compatible for carriage on the coach itself. You can do this by calling our dedicated Assisted Travel Team before you travel.” I therefore rang them to ask if my wheelchair and the Wetherby stop is OK. They said they would get back to me and didn’t. What followed was Kafkaesque.

Me, 28th April: Please can you tell me if I can travel in my wheelchair, it’s a manual wheelchair, a RGK Maxima. Please can you tell me if Wetherby coach stop is accessible for your coaches?

NX, 29th April: I can confirm that your wheelchair has been safety checked with our services so that is fine. Wetherby is a stop that we would need to assess to see if it is accessible.

Me, 29th April: Please can you assess Wetherby stop

NX, 30th April: Your request has been sent off to the relevant department to assess.Please can you check with us once you have decided upon a date of travel so that we can check to see if the assessment has been done. I hope this helps.

WTF?! They asked me for a travel date for the stop I didn’t know whether I could use. How does that work?

Me, 30th April:No, please can you let me know when it’s been done, and how long it will take, rather than asking me to contact you on some nebulous future date?

Me, 8th May: So have you had a look at this stop yet?

NX, 8th May: The stop check has been requested however has yet to be scheduled in.The stop will be scheduled in and checked when our Safety team are within that region. Each member of the Safety team are in charge of one region each and while this is the case, due to the region being quite large, it may take some time for this stop to be checked. I thank you for your patience in the meantime.

Me, 21st May: Please can you tell me if you have assessed the Wetherby bus stop, and if not, when you will be able to do so

Me, 31st July: Have you checked the Wetherby bus stop yet?

NX, 6th August: I am sorry for the delay. I have spoken to the department that checks stops and they have advised that they aim to have the check done by the end of this month. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.

NX, 17th November: I am really sorry for the delay in our response.The Wetherby stop has been checked and I am sorry to inform the verdict has come back as the stop being inaccessible. The space in use is not flat and does not have sufficient amount of space for it to be deployed.I hope this information helps, thank you for your patience whilst this was looked into.

Yeah that helped loads, thank you National Express, and 6½ months is a perfectly reasonable time to tell me that the stop I use for local buses without problem is not accessible to your “accessible” coaches. Just like non-disabled people – oh sorry, wait, they can book a day ahead and rely on being able to travel, or even Turn Up And Go.

For Goodness’ sake.

Equality Act Disability Select Committee evidence

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Well, that was a nervy and interesting experience. I am very grateful to the Lords Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability for giving me the opportunity to give evidence today, along with Mr Jonathan Fogerty and (later) Mr Paul Breckell. I’m also grateful for the support of Gwynneth Peddler and Lianna Etkind from that wonderful group of disability transport activists Transport for All, and to my wonderful, committed and hard-working PA Mike.

Here’s a transcript of my oral evidence – or there’s the video of the recording below..

My written evidence to the Committee is already online.

Applications for S28 Assistance

Posted on by Doug Paulley

As part of my research into the number of disability discrimination – goods and services cases taken under the Equality Act 2010, I have sent a Freedom of Information request to the Equality and Human Rights Commission as to their consideration and approval of applications for funding under Section 28 of the Equality Act 2006. This is the mechanism by which the EHRC can provide funding, legal advice or other support to people seeking assistance to take legal action for discrimination.

I’ve analysed the responses. I must immediately state that it is likely that I have made errors in the analysis or in understanding the information, or that the EHRC may also have made errors; also that some cases were open to interpretation and some cases (e.g. “my” case against Firstbus) were sent for decisions more than once so occur several times in the stats.

My “raw analysis” of each case, such as it is, is in this Google Sheets spreadsheet. I have indicated whether each case is on one of the eight protected characteristics – Disability, Race, Religion or Belief, Age, Gender, Transgender, Sexual Orientation, Human Rights or Pregnancy and Maternity – or if the case involves more than one characteristic, and if so, whether that includes Disability. I have also indicated in each case whether it was an Employment issue or Other, and whether the EHRC approved the application for assistance.

Since January 2013, there have been 177 such applications for assistance. 45 were granted assistance; that’s 25%. 71 applications were for employment discrimination (40%). 20 applications for assistance with employment were approved; that’s 39%. Meanwhile, 25 cases in the provision of services were approved; an approval rate of 24%.

Of the 177 applications, 56 (32%) exclusively involved the protected characteristic of disability, and a further 21 (12%) were on multiple characteristics including disability. That means that disability was a common characteristic in applications for assistance, more than other characteristics, and featured in 44% of such applications.

Of cases that included disability (either as the sole characteristic or with others), 22 (29%) applications were approved. 25 applications (32%) were in employment. 52 applications were for assistance in disability goods and services cases (that’s around 17 per year). 15 were approved (29%).

The stats therefore make clear that there are very few applications for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to support cases for disability discrimination cases in the provision of goods and services. There are less than 17 applications each year, of which on average 5 cases are approved. Given the repetition noted in the stats (some cases appearing more than once), the number is lower than that.

I guess one conclusion we could reach is that there are very few instances of breaches of the equality act in disability discrimination in the provision of goods and services here in the UK. I must immediately discount this. I reckon I experience unlawful discrimination more than 17 times each year, all on my own, let alone the other several million disabled people in the UK.

So the next question is: why are there so few cases for disability discrimination? Why are there so few applications to the EHRC for assistance? And why are so few applications granted? Is the EHRC enabling disabled people to challenge the discrimination they experience?

I am grateful for the support that I am receiving from the EHRC for “my” Firstbus case. However I have to wonder if the EHRC could and should take a wider role in challenging the discrimination disabled people face.