• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Transport / Bus companies ‘using loopholes’ to evade access laws
Doug Paulley on a bus, with text about the law on access

Bus companies ‘using loopholes’ to evade access laws

By John Pring on 18th August 2016 Category: Transport

Listen

Public transport providers and local authorities are using loopholes in legislation to avoid their legal obligations to ensure that buses are accessible to disabled people, campaigners fear.

They believe that transport companies are using three different loopholes to allow them to cut costs and use ageing, inaccessible buses.

Access laws state that all buses and coaches have to meet the Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (PSVAR) – which date back to 2000 – but coaches have until January 2020 to comply, while all single-deck buses have had to comply by January 2016.

One of the ways that some bus companies have been dodging the regulations, it is believed, is by simply removing the hanging straps in buses, and placing “no standing” signs in their vehicles.

This means they can call their vehicles coaches instead of buses, because there are no standing passengers.

Another tactic is to block-book inaccessible buses for contracts to provide free school transport.

Buses that provide only free school transport do not have to meet PSVAR, but the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has told disabled activist Doug Paulley that it believes some councils are trying to cut costs by using inaccessible vehicles, while at the same time allowing members of the public to use the buses as fare-paying passengers, and also charging some pupils, which should invalidate the PSVAR exemption.

The third loophole used by bus companies is to take advantage of regulations that allow inaccessible vehicles that are more than 20 years old to be used for a maximum of 20 days a year.

Paulley (pictured), who is currently awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether disabled people should have priority in using the wheelchair space on buses, said he has caught a bus that was inaccessible to wheelchair-users, despite the PSVAR, and which was taking advantage of both the 20 days-a-year loophole, and the free school transport loophole.

He said: “When the government put the deadlines for accessibility in place, they set the deadlines at the projected lifetime of buses and predicted that all existing buses would be worn out and out of circulation by now.

“It seems bonkers to me that operators are playing silly buggers to get round the ban on using inaccessible buses, to enable them to use recently bought, ancient and inaccessible buses on scheduled bus services. And I think it treats us with contempt.”

Paulley is also concerned that the law is almost impossible to enforce for a disabled person because it comes under criminal legislation, rather than civil law.

This means that any breach of the law would have to be proved “beyond reasonable doubt” instead of “on the balance of probabilities”, even if an organisation could be persuaded to take on the prosecution.

He added: “It’s perverse that something that was considered so important that failure to comply was made a criminal offense, is so easily sidestepped and not enforced or enforceable.”

The Department for Transport failed to comment by 11am today (18 August), despite repeatedly promising to do so.

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: Department for transport Doug Paulley DVSA PSVAR

Related

Government’s new access adviser questions release of discrimination evidence
30th March 2023
Anger over ‘disgraceful’ Network Rail plan for more inaccessible footbridges
16th February 2023
Watchdog takes Equality Act steps against government over rail access
9th February 2023

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to the free Access London Theatre Guide

Access

Latest Stories

Watchdog investigates possible failures at mental health hospital after 24 alleged rapes

DWP minister asked to predict how many will die due to stricter sanctions regime

Watchdog gives Treasury go-ahead to keep budget equality impact secret

Government’s new access adviser questions release of discrimination evidence

Six disability campaigners tell MPs: Government’s benefit reforms are not fit for purpose

Disabled Tory peer tells MPs: DWP is ‘stuck in a time warp’

Watchdog warns DWP over repeated failure on freedom of information laws

Frustration over review’s failure to call Met police ‘institutionally disablist’

Disabled activists raise concerns over MPs’ assisted suicide inquiry

Disability discrimination in Met police is ‘baked into the system’, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web