Virgin Trains meeting

Welcome,

Transport and the inclusion of disabled passengers (or lack of) is one of the current topics of discussion here at Assist UK, and an area we hope to focus upon in upcoming articles in our next newsletter.

Following our meeting on 22nd April with Chris Hagyard, Franchise Manager for Virgin Trains – he is tasked with ensuring suitable arrangements are in place for disabled travellers - many positive responses were forthcoming. Virgin is excited to work with Assist UK to address problems regarding disabled customer service and assistance. The following is a list of priorities Virgin envisages should be implemented to ensure disabled access and assistance achieves the standard it should.

Virgin Trains are looking at marking platforms at major stations which will line up disabled coaches with marked areas at the station. Raised platforms would then be built-in at stations creating no need for manual ramps to be attached to the carriage.

• In their next generation of trains, Virgin Trains is considering level access to ensure disabled passengers can board without ramp assistance.
• Virgin is keen to retrain staff to be able to handle conflicts frequently arising from disabled spaces being utilised for luggage / prams etc. They are keen to put this in place by employing new signage next to disabled spacing emphasising the legal nature of this. Virgin is also keen to ensure staff are cognoscente with all needs disabled customers require while travelling.
• Assist UK are also keen to review Virgin Trains’ internal training to see if we are able to contribute anything to enable their training to be more acutely aware of the differing needs of disabled passengers.

There was also discussion of Manchester Piccadilly Train Station’s disabled car parking bays being used by staff once their overflow car park is full. Although it doesn’t full under Virgin’s remit – Network Rail must hold their hands up here - they are devoted to ensuring stations work to the same standards of service that they do.

Of course, it isn’t only the privilege of Network Rail and its cohorts in proving hard to pin down to commitments regarding disabled people. The gamut of black taxis in the capital is proving resilient to respond to disabled travellers’ needs, as I witnessed last month on a number of occasions. Flagging down a taxi might well be easy, but getting one to stay still once the driver’s seen my wheelchair is somewhat harder! Leaving an event at Admiralty House and catching a taxi proved tricky, when the driver, cornered by my PA into taking us, opened up his boot to reveal more personal debris than the average charity shop. Hidden underneath the ruins lay his assistance ramp, obviously rarely considered as a necessity to be used. How we tackle a change of mentality to get taxi drivers to view wheelchair users, not as an inconvenience but in the same light as they do any other paying customer is another challenge we have for the future.

As a final note, I would like to pass on my thanks to all the Making the Links members who have emailed feedback to us to offer their own valuable feedback into this debate.

All the best,

Alan Norton