Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-134)
1 DECEMBER 2004
MR NEIL
SCALES, MR
MARK YEXLEY,
MR TONY
DEPLEDGE, MR
DAVID MAPP
AND MR
JOHN YUNNIE
Q120 Chairman: Yes, I can assure you
that public toilets on the whole do not actually cost the taxpayer
what railway companies do.
Mr Yunnie: The general situation
is that the modern compliant toilet is a perfectly fit for purpose
piece of equipment which most of the time works as designed.
Q121 Mr Randall: This question is for
the rail operating companies. You may have heard in the first
session that there was a gentleman who had been using his motorised
scooter for six years successfully, quite happily getting on and
off the train. Then quite recently he was told that he could not
use it any more. What do you think was the cause of that? Has
there been a change in regulations or the way it is perceived
that might cause that for the same model? What I am saying is
a year later, for that particular user of the trains, instead
of getting better, it has got palpably worse.
Mr Yunnie: I have spoken to Mr
Coe, so I know the case very well indeed. I think the background
to it is that the train company he travels with had not really
had an enforced policy about the carriage of powered scooters,
and I would just say as an aside that there is actually no requirement
upon rail operators to carry scooters at all. What seems to have
happened is that the local staff at the stations between which
he seeks to travel had been finding a way of accommodating him,
as you say, for about six years. One of the perhaps unforeseen
effects of the train operators getting their newly updated DPPPs
approved by the Strategic Rail Authority has been that it has
heightened awareness among train company management of the obligations
and implications of the documents that they have signed up to,
and in the case of Great Western, they had decided as part of
that exercise that, at any rate for the time being, while the
range of issues, which I am happy to talk about if you felt there
was time, are resolved on a national basis, and therefore they
implemented a ban, and Mr Coe has found himself excluded from
the train as a result of that chain of events.
Q122 Mr Randall: I am very grateful for
that but what I am interested in is whether sometimes the implementation
of new regulations or agreements or health and safety—I
think we all know in everyday life sometimes some of the health
and safety things seem to be over-zealously implemented. I am
not saying this particular one was health and safety. Is that
a problem for you?
Mr Yunnie: I was here earlier
this afternoon when there was a discussion about the implications
on the use of barrow crossings was discussed and I would entirely
subscribe to the general comments that were being made at that
time, that there has been an issue there between health and safety
issues and those of access. In the case of scooters, it has long
been the case that, regardless of whether there is a requirement
to carry them or not, physically, some scooters will fit on to
some trains. One of the key issues is that the manoeuvring characteristics
of a powered scooter are not the same as those of a wheelchair,
and there are numerous types of rolling stock running on the network
at the moment which are broadly accessible—not necessarily
RVAR-compliant but they have a wheelchair space, they have an
accessible wheelchair toilet, but the way in which one manoeuvres
into the wheelchair space can be quite tricky, and there are many
classes of powered scooter that will not actually carry out that
manoeuvre. The issue is, as Anne Fry from the Department rightly
said earlier on, there is the publication Wheels for Wheels, which
indicates which scooters potentially will go on to public transport.
However, because we have such a range of accessible but not compliant
rolling stock, it actually becomes rather more complicated than
that when you are faced on the ground with whether Mrs Smith's
powered scooter will actually fit on to train operator X's particular
train that turns up on the day.
Q123 Mr Randall: One other question.
We have heard about the book ahead service, and although I think
the pragmatic view prevailed, is there a policy or is there any
way you could encourage the other operating companies? Some do
have 0800 numbers and some do not. Is there anything happening
on that?
Mr Yunnie: Yes, there is, in as
much as as my colleague Mr Mapp has already said, ATOC's role
is that of encouraging best practice amongst the operators, but
without the ability to actually force them to do something they
do not wish to do. We have taken on board the advice that we have
received from DPTAC, amongst other places, and are at the present
time encouraging operators to look into whether they can indeed
move over to 0800 numbers. I personally do not dispute the view
that although it might only be a local rate call to make your
advanced arrangements, that is nevertheless quite possibly a telephone
call you would not have had to have made at all if you were not
seeking the disabled people's assistance service, and therefore
we are indeed encouraging train operators to do that.
Q124 Chairman: You are rather giving
us the impression that train operating companies only actually
do things when they are required to do so. I am sure you do not
quite mean that. Or are we suggesting that the rules of the Strategic
Rail Authority are not tough enough?
Mr Yunnie: No, I do not think
that is the case. There has been a gradual move over the last
two or three years from the majority of train operating companies,
not even using an 0845 number but requiring you to call an ordinary
national number which, depending on where you happen to be ringing
from, might have actually resulted in you paying a full national
price. They moved from that to almost entirely using 0845 local
call rate numbers. It is an ongoing process and we now seem to
be at the point where we are moving into the world of the 0800
number.
Q125 Chairman: I was not just thinking
about the access to telephone information; I was thinking about
all the other provisions. You are quite convinced that the train
operating companies are going to be responsive without being told
that they had to provide certain facilities, are you?
Mr Mapp: I think in many cases
train operators do pursue good practice without having to be forced
into doing so. They, like any other commercial entities, have
a business incentive to ensure that the whole of their market
is addressed and in that sense, providing services for disabled
people, making sure that accessibility is provided, is part of
that. I do not think it is the case that train operators only
act when they are forced to act.
Q126 Chairman: Central Trains?
Mr Mapp: It is an interesting
case. I heard the description of the court case earlier. I think
one issue that was missed out from that description was that there
is not actually a taxi company in Thetford that is able to provide
an accessible taxi, and the only option was to procure a taxi
from Norwich, one hour's drive away, a two-hour round trip, in
order to take the customer from one side of the station to the
other.
Q127 Ian Lucas: Whilst we are on the
subject of court cases, I think you were present when we had what
I thought was an interesting discussion about mediation in trying
to resolve a lot of these issues. Have any of you had any experience
of dealing with the mediation system?
Mr Yunnie: Certainly some of the
train companies have engaged in mediation over issues like the
provision of large-print timetables and the degree to which it
was reasonable to meet a particular customer's request in that
area. In the main, they have come to mutually satisfactory conclusions
at the end of the process.
Q128 Ian Lucas: Does ATOC promote mediation
amongst your members?
Mr Yunnie: Yes. We have regular
meetings of the ATOC disability group, where the train operators
come together to discuss disability issues. We exchange information
between the train companies within that forum on recent mediation
cases that have come to their attention.
Q129 Ian Lucas: So far as the importance
of legal cases in terms of driving your policy, do you think that
those legal cases are necessary to actually drive you in
taking forward improvements in accessibility? In other words,
we are back to the question of whether you will do things voluntarily
or only if you are forced to?
Mr Yunnie: It is certainly not
the case that we will only do it when we are forced to. However,
I would agree with the remark made in the previous session that
a number of relevant court decisions will help everybody. One
of the unfortunate aspects of the much publicised recent case
affecting Thetford station is that there were a number of unique
circumstances surrounding that case, which we clearly do not have
time to go into today, but it has meant that the outcome has perhaps
not provided much in the way of a way forward, and to that extent
the train company community as a whole will welcome some appropriate
cases emerging over the coming months to help a better understanding
of what is reasonable and unreasonable. My colleague Mr Mapp has
just referred to the fact that the nearest accessible cab in the
Thetford case was a very long way away. We assume that a test
of reasonableness would set some kind of boundary around how far
it was realistic to bring a cab, and an appropriate court case
would go a long way in helping those kinds of issues.
Mr Depledge: From the bus industry
point of view, we are very much a local business and our objectives
would be to solve matters at a local level, to work out what the
appropriate local solution is. At a policy and strategic level,
we have undertaken an audit of every interface that we might have
between our organisation and a potential customer from the point
when the customer starts to think about going by bus to the point
where they have completed the journey. That is a very helpful
way of analysing all the issues that might come up, but in principle,
it is a local option.
Mr Yexley: David Congdon made
a really good point in the last session, that if you have the
vision to appreciate that so many good things flow from training
people properly, that is something which is very easy to jump
on board with. Even if in the very short run it costs you money
to do the training, it has got to be the way forward.
Q130 Chairman: Finally, Mr Scales, is
it really easier to provide proper services for disabled people
where there is a passenger transport executive, and if that is
the case, why is that the case?
Mr Scales: It is a treadmill,
Chairman. Once you get on, you cannot get off. Basically, our
philosophy is to get a single integrated network that is accessible
to everyone, so we have invested in a lot of things. We have trained
all the staff; all 924 staff are trained on DDA. We are making
sure that all our facilities are fully accessible, all our media
is fully accessible. It is easier when you have the advantage
of a good local transport plan and good guidance from government
on that. That has helped a lot. Before LTPs came about in 2000,
we had already embraced the disability agenda and we are trying
to move it forward, but not as quickly as we would like, because
whilst we can make our facilities very accessible, and our bus
stops very accessible, the pathway in the middle is not, and you
can end up with very poor pathways between two very accessible
islands, if you like. It is very difficult to get local authorities
to come to the party in some cases. The transport side is fairly
easy. On the train mode we are a lot better off on Merseyside
because we have a 25-year concession, and we are in effect the
SRA for the area, so we can influence things and our colleagues
in the private sector, having such a long franchise, can make
the investment and can get the money out.
Q131 Chairman: Are you really saying
to us it is only when you have the muscle to do this that the
private sector will respond to your minimum conditions?
Mr Scales: No. I think it is a
matter of education. If everybody starts subscribing to the social
model of disability rather than the medical model of disability,
we have an ageing population. We need to start taking action now.
If we join up all the accessible bits that we have, we will be
all right. That is what we are trying to do, to promote good practice.
It is easier, I think, if you have a unitary authority, where
you have control of everything. It is much more difficult where
I am trying to influence five separate metropolitan districts
or five separate highways authorities. Our colleagues in Manchester
have double that problem, with 10 separate districts to deal with,
all with different priorities, different urban development plan
at different levels. Any support from government is welcome. You
have to listen to the pressure groups and embrace them. Just get
it into the culture. Once you have got it into the culture, it
makes life a lot easier. Everything we design is accessible now,
and you just build it in.
Q132 Mr Stringer: Would it be easier
if the buses were re-regulated?
Mr Scales: I think that is a very
interesting question, sir.
Q133 Mr Stringer: Are you going to give
a very interesting answer?
Mr Scales: I think the system
that Mayor Livingstone has got is very expensive but very nice.
The system we have got in Merseyside is not working properly and
I am looking for something in the middle.
Q134 Mr Stringer: But some form of re-regulation
would help with disabled access?
Mr Scales: It certainly would.
It would certainly help the investment decision. I have to say
that our colleagues from Arriva are making large investments in
vehicles and a lot of them are on Merseyside. Our average fleet
age is about 8.5 years but there are certain operators where the
average fleet age is 20 years and they are operating ex-London
Transport Titans, which are incredibly inaccessible. I think it
would help enormously, Mr Stringer. How we actually move that
model forward is something I am sure I may be examined on in the
future.
Chairman: On that happy note, gentlemen,
thank you very much for coming this afternoon. We are very grateful
to you.
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