Lukewarm reception for rail company’s plan to improve passenger assistance

A train company’s “action plan” to improve its much-criticised passenger assistance services has been given a lukewarm reception by disabled campaigners.

The Office of Rail and Road, the rail regulator, has told Northern that its latest plan for improving the assistance it provides disabled passengers is “acceptable”.

The regulator’s concerns about the publicly-owned operator’s performance date back at least five years.

ORR research (PDF), published in July, found that nearly one in five (18 per cent) disabled passengers who booked assistance at a station managed by Northern, and responded to a survey, did not receive any of that assistance.

And only 74 per cent of disabled passengers travelling through Northern stations were met for their assistance in a “reasonable timeframe”.

ORR had written to Northern about its concerns in July, but the regulator said Northern’s initial response failed to provide reassurance that it understood the causes of its poor performance, that it had “robust plans in place to secure improvements”, or that it had made “appropriate progress” against actions it had planned previously.

ORR had previously raised concerns with Northern in 2019 and 2022 and had been promised that action was being taken.

The regulator said in a follow-up letter in September (PDF) that Northern’s previous plans to improve its services had “either not been fully implemented or not been successful in tackling the underlying causes of failed assists”, and it demanded an improvement plan.

Now ORR says Northern has produced an “acceptable action plan” for improvements over the next year.

Among the promises in its plan, Northern says it will work on: reviewing how it staffs assistance at the 10 stations where it receives most assistance requests, including Leeds; setting up a new team to provide support by phone and WhatsApp to passengers who need assistance; and trialling a new process that will allow passengers at unstaffed stations who have not pre-booked assistance to alert train conductors to their presence at that station.

It will also work on ensuring that all reports of failed assistance are “recorded, investigated and the root cause identified”.

If Northern fails to improve its performance over the next 12 months, ORR may take formal action against the train operator.

Accessible transport campaigner Doug Paulley has experienced a series of failures with passenger assistance on Northern services, including being left locked on a train at Leeds station last year.

He said this week that Northern had “a major, major attitudinal problem towards passenger assistance and certainly towards seeing it as a core part of their job”.

He said the actions promised by Northern to improve its passenger assistance were “a bit wishy-washy”.

He said: “It felt like there was nothing revolutionary in those specific requirements and neither were they particularly specific.

“They were all things that Northern should have been doing anyway.”

He added: “I generally find that the individual staff members, with the odd exception, are really decent people who care about access and who work damn hard, including the guards and station staff, but there is a wider organisational issue.

“To me it stinks of a cultural problem further up.”

Flick Williams, a disability rights campaigner and retired disability equality trainer and access consultant, said: “I welcome the plans for Northern to improve the reliability and consistency of its passenger assistance. But the proof of the pudding comes later.

“A plan is just a plan until we see real improvements to the service offered.”

Northern had failed to comment on the ORR announcement by noon today (Thursday).

Stephanie Tobyn, ORR’s director of strategy, policy and reform, said: “After recent constructive discussions with Northern, we welcome its plan which recognises where it can improve upon its assistance reliability.

“The onus is now on the operator to fulfil what it has set out to achieve. We will monitor its progress over the coming months.”

Meanwhile, ORR has launched a two-month consultation on a new annual assessment that will rate how train companies provide assistance to disabled passengers.

The new assessment will be applied to train operators and Network Rail, and ORR says it will strengthen its ability to hold operators to account for poor performance, highlight good practice to share across the industry, and drive improvements in passenger assistance.

Picture: Footage shot by Doug Paulley during one of Northern’s many passenger assistance failures, with subtitles by BBC Look North

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