Research into disabled passengers’ awareness and perceptions of assistance

This work is being commissioned by ORR’s Competition and Consumer Policy Team. The Team develops and advises on ORR’s competition and consumer policy, and has an enforcement role in these areas. The Team is also responsible for approving policies and monitoring compliance under passenger-facing licence conditions.

Access to public transport is for many a necessity of everyday life. As the regulator, we recognise the importance of the rail network being open to everyone regardless of disability. It is our role, via the operating licences, to oversee that the operators of trains and stations enable passengers with a disability to make their journeys easily and confidently, whether those journeys are made independently or with assistance. One of the objectives in our current business plan is therefore to continue to monitor and enforce the obligations operators are accountable for under the terms of their operating licences.

In this context, train and station operators are required by their operating licences to establish and comply with a disabled people’s protection policy (DPPP). A DPPP sets out, amongst other things, the arrangements that an operator will put in place to support disabled people using its services. ORR is responsible for approving and monitoring the implementation of these DPPPs. A key element of DPPPs concerns the requirement that ‘each licensed operator must participate in a reservation system for disabled passengers whose journey begins at any of the stations at which that operator’s trains are scheduled to stop’. That current system is called Passenger Assist. Operators are expected to provide assistance that has been booked through Passenger Assist, at any station during the hours that trains are scheduled to serve that station. As part of our monitoring work we want to increase our evidence base, ensure that obligations in this area are being met and ensure that passengers are satisfied with the service they receive.

Before we commission work to investigate passengers’ experience of assistance, we would first like to understand disabled people’s awareness of the assistance available to them on the rail network more generally. Our aim is to understand the extent to which current levels of usage reflect genuine demand. Where actual or perceived barriers to access are identified, we wish to explore these to understand how they can be mitigated.

Additional information: This tender closes on 20/09/2016 at 17:00. All communication must be via our portal.