Network Rail to spend £8 million on building an inaccessible footbridge that will last 120 years

Network Rail’s decision to spend nearly £8 million building a new footbridge that will be inaccessible to many disabled people has been labelled an “appalling contradiction” of the government’s commitment to improving the accessibility of the public transport system.

The footbridge (pictured) will be built to last 120 years, and although lifts could be added at a later stage, that is thought unlikely to happen with so many competing demands on the railway network.

It is just the latest example of the public body spending millions of pounds on building footbridges that cannot be used by wheelchair-users, other passengers with mobility impairments, and parents with pushchairs and buggies.

Network Rail, which owns and runs most of the country’s rail infrastructure, has previously insisted that it has no idea how many inaccessible footbridges it is planning to build across Britain.

Announcing that work was due to start this week on the £7.9 million replacement footbridge at Harlington station, near Luton, it said the new structure was “designed to last for 120 years” and would “enhance reliability and safety for passengers for years to come” and “provide passengers with a modern, reliable footbridge that will serve the community for more than a century”.

But the announcement made no mention of the impact on disabled passengers at the station, which has no step-free access.

Tony Jennings, co-chair of a rail accessibility panel and co-founder of the Campaign for Level Boarding, said it was an “appalling contradiction of the government’s accessibility commitments and undermines disabled people’s trust in the government and Network Rail”.

He pointed to the “warm words” of the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, at last summer’s Paralympics in Paris, in which he responded to a rail access failure experienced by Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson by telling Channel 4: “Whether it’s trains or other forms of transport, you shouldn’t be able to carry people from place to place if you haven’t got the facilities to ensure everybody can get safely on and off the train or plane or whatever it may be.”

Jennings said: “Only installing an inaccessible footbridge suggests short-term cost-saving over long-term equity and is discriminatory, excluding wheelchair- and mobility scooter-users, and doesn’t future proof for an older demographic or take account of socioeconomic benefits.”

He added: “As a mobility scooter-user, Network Rail have failed miserably.

“I’m not asking for much; my minimum standard is simply an accessible station – it’s not unreasonable when £7.9 million is spent on a footbridge for the station to be step free.”

He called for Network Rail to stop using the “discriminatory loophole” that is Appendix B of the Department for Transport’s National Technical Specification Notice on accessibility.

Appendix B states that stations with an average of 1,000 or fewer passengers a day do not need to “have lifts or ramps where these would otherwise be necessary to provide a step free route”, as long as they include “provisions for the future installation of a lift and/or ramps” and there is a step-free station within 50 km on the same route.

Concerns about Harlington and Appendix B were originally raised last November by Julian Vaughan, a train driver, chair of Bedfordshire Rail Access Network, and a Labour parliamentary candidate in 2017 and 2019.

He has called on X/Twitter for Appendix B to be removed and for a “complete culture change within the rail industry towards accessibility”.

Two years ago, Network Rail admitted to Disability News Service that it kept no central records of how many footbridges it builds that are not accessible to disabled people and others who cannot use steps.

This week, Network Rail refused to say if it accepted that its plans would breach the Equality Act and whether it still has no record of how many inaccessible footbridges it plans to build.

Asked why it was building new infrastructure that will bake in inaccessibility for generations to come, a Network Rail spokesperson said: “We know how important an accessible railway is for our passengers, and we’re committed to making the network as inclusive and accessible as possible.

“The existing bridge at Harlington is life expired and needs to be replaced.

“Due to current budget constraints, we took the difficult decision to install a stepped only bridge at this time.

“However, the design of the new bridge will allow for lifts to be added if additional funding becomes available.”

Network Rail said it was also carrying out minor works at the station to improve accessibility, including replacing worn tactile paving, resurfacing parts of the platform, and repainting yellow lines.

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