MACS response to ‘A Railway Fit for Britain’s Future’ consultation

The Mobility and Access Committee is an independent body created by statute to advise the Scottish Minister for Transport on transport and disability. Most of its members are disabled. We are responding to the consultation on A Railway Fit for Britain’s Future on the aspects which impact disabled railway passengers.

  • We are very pleased to see that accessibility has been retained as one of the six guiding principles of the construction of Great British Railways and is referenced in the ‘New Vision’ section. However, we have concerns about how this will be implemented in practice and the proposals seem to represent a weakening of previous commitments on accessibility (see below).
  • We are also pleased to see that the current situation with regard to the Scottish Government’s devolved powers appears to be largely retained [paras 6.10-13]. We understand the Scottish Government has a number of concerns, about for instance, track access charges. We support the retention of the current devolved arrangements because they have delivered for disabled rail passengers in Scotland. Whilst we do not agree with everything the Scottish Government has done in recent years (ticket office reduced hours) it has made major strides in improving accessibility, for example committing to the bulk of new rolling stock being level boarding, and having top-class delivery on Access for All projects. We wish to see this work continue.
  • We support the creation of a powerful Passenger Standards Authority grown out of Transport Focus and particularly it having a specific role in accessibility [para 2.10]. We support it having regulatory powers. It should also have a legal requirement to consider accessibility and the needs of disabled passengers. We believe that the Authority itself should represent diverse passenger needs and for this reason we recommend that the Bill specify that PSA’s Board has at least 2 disabled members.
  • We also support the Scottish Government’s right to appoint a Board member to PSA [para 2.17] as we indicate above, they have proved adept overall in improving accessibility.
  • We support the proposal that the continuation of disabled and other railcards is guaranteed by legislation [para 5.5]. We propose that consideration be given to making the disabled railcard free.

There are nevertheless some important commitments missing from the Bill proposals:

  • The Bill should contain a statutory duty for Great British Railways to improve accessibility for disabled passengers.
  • There is no reference to a National Strategy on rail accessibility. Such a strategy should be mandatory for GBR and included in the legislation.
  • As suggested in previous policy documents, DPTAC should be referenced as a statutory adviser to GBR and the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland should have a parallel role for devolved Scottish services.
  • At the current rate of progress with the Access for All programme, all Great British Railways stations will not be step-free until the 22nd century. This is not acceptable. The Bill should contain a commitment for the whole network to be step-free by an earlier date.
  • The interchange between rail and other modes is aften a problem for disabled passengers. We suggest that GBR have a statutory duty to link up with other transport modes.
  • We also suggest that GBR should have an overall statutory duty to maintain safety.

Beyond the Bill we believe that:

  • Scottish rail services, through Scotrail and Network Rail Scotland, have been reasonably successful in merging track and train activities. We believe much could be learned by GBR from their experience.
  • Rail services have been in the private sector for a long time now. Best practice from other publicly-owned transport providers should be sought in the design of GBR.

Simon Watkins
Rail Lead for The Rail Workstream
The Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland
14 March 2025