Accessible Travel | Workplace of Rail and Street

We wish to empower assured journey by all, together with disabled passengers, whether or not their journeys are made independently or with help.

Understanding the passenger expertise

We publish business information on volumes of help each quarter. We outline an help as the assistance offered at one station, which signifies that two assists are recorded per journey leg. A single journey involving one prepare could be counted as two assists, for the assistance wanted on the stations at every finish of the journey. A journey with one change of trains could be counted as 4 assists.

This yr, operators have reported that 1.9m assists had been booked upfront, an 18% enhance on final yr. At least 1.5m flip up and go assists had been requested at a station, which signifies that at the very least 44% of assists requested had been flip up and go.

We have been surveying passengers on their experiences of booked help on an ongoing foundation since 2017, and publish findings yearly. We use the findings to assist us perceive the place we have to act to enhance the passenger expertise. This yr, greater than 10,000 passengers participated. Satisfaction with the help offered on the station the place passengers are efficiently met by employees is comparatively excessive, with 94% of passengers happy with the help they obtained on the station. However, the service will not be dependable sufficient with 10% reporting that they obtained not one of the help that they booked, much like the 11% reported final yr. The survey findings are a key enter to our benchmarking of operators’ efficiency in delivering help.

We require operators to report back to us every quarter on help outcomes. We had low confidence within the high quality and usefulness of this information and, following a evaluate facilitated by RDG, we carried out adjustments to our reporting necessities in April 2025 to mirror new reporting classes developed by business. Frontline employees are skilled to report the end result of each help within the Passenger Assist system utilizing these reporting classes, which they’ll do by means of both the Passenger Assist employees cell app or net interface.

RDG has been working with operators to grasp the extent to which this new method is enabling a extra correct image of when help failures are taking place and why. As a outcome, some minor amendments are being made to reporting classes in summer season 2026 to assist extra constant reporting.

This business information on help outcomes ought to turn into helpful to make use of in holding operators to account for efficiency. It also needs to be important perception for operators, enabling them to grasp the place they should focus efforts on making enhancements for passengers. We must see all operators sustaining a concentrate on making certain that their employees perceive the worth of reporting help outcomes, and really feel assured and comfy in persistently reporting precisely, together with the place issues go fallacious.

Approval of operators’ Accessible Travel Policies

We maintain operators to account towards the commitments they make of their Accessible Travel Policies (ATPs) and require operators to evaluate their ATPs yearly.

Since April 2025, we now have accepted Accessible Travel Policies for 5 operators as they transitioned into public possession underneath the Department for Transport Operator (c2c, Greater Anglia, Greater Thameslink Railway, South Western Railway and West Midlands Trains), and for 2 operators who’ve taken over operations from earlier licence holders (GTS for the Elizabeth line, and First Rail London for London Overground). In all circumstances, the brand new licence holder has largely adopted the ATP from their predecessor.

We have additionally accepted ATPs for 2 new licence holders, DB Cargo and First Rail Stirling (Lumo). The two licence holders who are actually working underneath the Lumo model (East Coast Trains and First Rail Stirling) will likely be held to account towards the identical ATP.

All amendments to ATPs proposed by means of the annual evaluate course of had been minor.

Securing enhancements within the supply of help

We printed our first annual report benchmarking prepare and station operators’ supply of passenger help in December 2025. It varieties a part of the Government’s roadmap to an accessible railway. Our goal is to offer transparency on efficiency, establish areas for enchancment and have fun success the place operators are delivering properly.

The benchmarking framework focuses on two areas:

• Delivery efficiency – how reliably help is offered, alongside passenger satisfaction and employees data.
• Capability to Improve – a qualitative evaluation of organisational capability to strengthen supply, focused at operators with sustained poor efficiency.

Northern Trains, South Western Railway (SWR) and West Midlands Trains (WMT) recorded the bottom reliability. We carried out Capability to Improve assessments with SWR and WMT and, in consequence, requested each operators to determine motion plans to drive improved efficiency. Those plans are actually in place, and we’re holding the operators to account for supply.

We have been participating with Northern since 2024 on our issues with the poor reliability of its help provision. We accepted an enchancment plan in December 2024 and all actions had been delivered in 2025. We are monitoring Northern’s progress in the direction of delivering sustained enhancements within the reliability of passenger help. Data from our passenger survey and Northern’s thriller purchasing programme counsel that passengers are actually beginning to expertise a extra dependable help service.

We will present an replace on Northern, SWR and WMT’s progress in our second annual benchmarking report, later within the yr.

Disability consciousness coaching for passenger-facing employees

We require all operators, by means of their ATPs, to decide to offering incapacity consciousness coaching for passenger-facing employees. Where that coaching is delivered properly, and employees can help disabled passengers with confidence, it ought to lead to a extra dependable service and extra constructive experiences.

We launched new reporting necessities in April 2025, with operators submitting information to us quarterly on supply of employees coaching. We have been utilizing the info to tell bilateral compliance engagement and escalation. We have engaged with a number of operators which have reported, or have reported that they’re liable to creating, backlogs in refresher coaching. In most circumstances, the dimensions of non-compliance has been comparatively minor and operators have been in a position to clarify the explanations and their plans for well timed restoration. Northern trains was a big outlier, and we opened an enforcement investigation.