A sunny day in court
What the Equality Act 2010 actually asks of transport operators
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Hello everyone,
It was a sunny day in Leeds when I arrived at the County Court to watch the hearing of Doug Paulley against train operator GTR. What happened in this courtroom, and what led to it, tells you almost everything you need to know about how the Equality Act is meant to work and how often it doesn’t. The law shone as bright as the sun in Leeds.
Paulley took GTR to court over three separate failures last summer: a week of anxiety trying to book an accessible taxi for a leg of his journey with no wheelchair access at a station, a booking system that didn’t handle a multi-operator wheelchair space request well, and a train that arrived at London Bridge but the assistance he’d been promised wasn’t there. Everyone who travels to London Bridge on this route and needs assistance knows it’s not a one-off unfortunate experience there.
Finally, GTR admitted liability on all three. The judge accepted that discrimination had occurred. Only days before the hearing, the company offered Paulley up to £20,000 to make the cases go away. He settled for half of that, in exchange for legal undertakings rather than getting silenced. He didn’t want to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and he wanted to see legal responsibility.
So maybe this finally stops the myth that disabled people are only in for the money. It’s about accountability. No money will solve ongoing failed assists. What disabled people want is reasonable adjustments as defined by law, e.g., a ramp onto a train when we need it. Not worrying if we get overcarried or worrying if the train gets turned around and the wheelchair user is still on board going back to where they came from.
The term “reasonable adjustments” is often thrown around by transport operators as if it’s a courtesy rather than a legal duty. Section 29 of the Equality Act 2010 requires service providers not to discriminate against disabled people, and it places an anticipatory duty on them. Operators have to think ahead about the barriers disabled passengers will face, not wait for someone to hit one and then scramble and then say, “but the majority of wheelchair users are happy with the service”. That’s not a legal argument; that’s trying to calm your upper management team in meetings if you’re lucky.
Undertakings and declarations
I learnt a lot during this day in court. For example, what undertakings are and which role upper management plays if these cases go to court. I also learned that judges can issue declarations, especially when there is a public interest in the case. A declaration is a court’s formal statement of the legal position. A declaration creates a legal fact on record that you can point to afterwards, in future claims, in regulatory complaints to the ORR, in negotiating with the same operator next time something goes wrong. It’s more about leverage than enforcement, but it is important, especially in cases like this, where it was all about change. A declaration is about saying, clearly and publicly, that what happened was unlawful.
That’s the part operators consistently miss. Reasonable adjustments aren’t a reactive favour you extend once a disabled passenger has already been let down. They’re supposed to already be built into the day-to-day system. Whether an adjustment counts as “reasonable” depends on things like cost, practicality and the resources available, but a company operating a train service, especially if nationalised, but not only then, has no excuse for not anticipating that a wheelchair user might want to use their trains. This isn’t a grey area. It’s basic anticipatory planning that so many companies fail to do. In the Leeds case, three times for one passenger.
Where Stakeholder Engagement Would Have Stopped This
I say this in nearly every issue of this newsletter, and I’ll keep saying it until it stops being necessary: none of this is unpredictable. Disabled people have been telling train operators about exactly these failure points for years: turn-up-and-go, cross-operator bookings, staff attendance at unstaffed or under-staffed stations. And it’s not that they don’t know. I worked for GTR years ago, and it doesn’t look any better at others. It is a lack of understanding of how this way of operating impacts disabled people.
Proper engagement with disabled passengers is the solution. It’s an ongoing, structured process, with a genuine interest in passenger expectations and openness to changing your operating model.
Paper Compliance Isn’t Compliance
The Accessible Travel Policy agreed with the ORR must work in practice. It tells you nothing about whether a wheelchair user actually gets off the train at London Bridge with someone there to meet them. The fact that the ORR allows train operators to let wheelchair users wait for 5 minutes at terminus stations is incompatible with the Equality Act. I hope they’ll get this memo now.
Compliance-on-paper and access-in-practice have quietly become two different things across large parts of the rail industry, and operators have got very good at reporting the first while disabled passengers keep living the second.
The Equality Act doesn’t ask you to write a good policy. It asks you to produce a good outcome for a disabled passenger every time, including when nobody’s watching, and nothing’s gone wrong yet.
It’s not about the policy; it’s about whether anyone made sure it happened. The law already tells you what “reasonable” looks like. If the experience for disabled people is not as good as for non-disabled people, there is a huge issue. The only thing left is to build a railway where it’s true, not just on paper. It’s not about the weather forecast. It’s about the sun in the sky.
Some interesting links
Making public transport fully accessible ‘could boost UK economy by £176bn’. Nobody who works in accessibility and transport will be surprised. It’s simply not realistic to try to get disabled people into work but not provide a decent infrastructure.
Railways bill must ensure accessibility becomes a reality, disabled peers tell minister.
Disabled travellers often still can’t get through an airport without something going wrong. A new Breda University study finds it’s rarely one big failure, more like a broken system, mishandled mobility equipment and staff who never got the memo, all piling up until the whole trip falls apart. They suggest a co-creation approach for services at airports.
Something to listen to
The Office of Rail and Road speaks to BBC In Touch about redress and failed assists. Just for background information, in the UK we have something called Vento bands that are the tiered compensation scale used to set "injury to feelings" awards in discrimination cases. They matter for Equality Act cases because a disabled person suing a service provider isn't just claiming financial loss. They can claim for the hurt and humiliation of the discrimination itself, and Vento roughly tells you what that's worth: currently £1,300–£12,600 for less serious cases, up to £37,700–£62,900+ for the most serious ones (as of April 2026). So just compensating for the cost of the train ticket or explaining what went wrong really isn't the point.
Something to watch
Inaccessible transport “disappears” disabled people.
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Bits, Bobs & Jobs
The Motability Foundation is searching for a Transport Solutions Manager.
Apple in London is searching for an Accessibility Program Manager.
The Accessibility & Mobility Innovation Centre in Dublin is searching for a Centre Manager.
The British tea brand Twinings is set to become the first tea brand to introduce accessible QR (AQR) codes at scale, marking a significant step forward for inclusive packaging in the UK grocery sector.
Why Visibly Disabled People Still Have to “Come Out”.
Some final words
The Accessible Link is a reader-supported publication.
Who is writing this newsletter?
I’m Christiane Link, and I improve the customer experience in aviation, transport, and travel. I worked as a journalist for over two decades and travelled extensively for business and leisure. I’m a wheelchair user.
Work with me
Whether you're a Customer Service Director, a Head of Customer Experience, a corporate Accessibility Manager, a DEI leader, a transport planner, or a member of a disabled employee resource group, I can help you make your organisation more inclusive. You can book me for speaking engagements or hire me as a consultant for your accessibility or DEI strategy, communications advice and other related matters. I have worked for airlines, airports, train operators, public transport providers, and companies in other sectors.
If you want to read more from me, follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky or Mastodon. You can also reply to this email if you want to contact me.
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Such an interesting article. Also saving for the helpful links to read later 😊