Passenger Assist Continuous Monitoring research

This work is being commissioned by ORR's Competition and Consumer Policy Team. The Team is primarily 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 sector regulator, we recognise the importance of the rail network being open to everyone regardless of their circumstances. One of our key roles is therefore to ensure that the companies which operate passenger train services and manage mainline stations enable passengers with a disability to make their journeys easily and confidently, whether those journeys are made independently or with assistance.

We do this by requiring train and station operators to establish and comply with a disabled people's protection policy (DPPP) as a condition of their operating licence. 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 compliance monitoring we need ongoing evidence that obligations in this area are being met and that passengers are satisfied with the quality of assistance they are receiving.