Dear Marcial Boo and Baroness Falkner,
You have already been requested b the Association of British Commuters and the many signatories to their letters and latterly by MP Debbie Abrahams to intervene regarding the proposed closure of over 1,000 rail ticket offices.
Your own correspondence team state “Disabled people are protected under the 2010 Equality Act, which the EHRC is responsible for enforcing.” It is obvious to everyone else that the government and train operating companies are blatantly ignoring the Equality Act 2010 so please could you inform us why you are failing so miserably in even attempting to enforce adherence to the Equality Act.
It is obvious that the impact on being able to travel by rail will seriously deteriorate for disabled, older people and lone women travellers and that all of these groups need face-to-face assistance located in one accessible place. Yet the consultation lasts for only 3 weeks, there does not appear to be any Easy Read or other accessible versions of it available to disabled people and most importantly there has been no Equality Impact Assessment carried out before the launch of the very poorly advertised consultation.
Help points in many stations which disabled people are being told they could use to get assistance are too high for wheelchair users to reach, not accessible to deaf or blind people and often on platforms which without help disabled people cannot reach. They are not a suitable or viable alternative to a staffed ticket office.
We believe that these proposals particularly as the outcomes of the flawed consultation will occur during the parliamentary recess period should be recalled given the obvious breaches in equality legislation.
We look forward to your responses which will be published on our website.
Yours sincerely,
Linda Burnip
On behalf of the DPAC steering group
– & thank you Bob too 🙂
Amen to that Jaxx
Linda did all the work, I just posted it
Thanks for commenting
Thank you for your hard work Linda Burnip, you put it better than I can currently.
I don’t know what they expect us to do;
– if they cut transport staff, they will have to build trains/ station boat forms with wheelchair and accessibility needs for this to function without staff.
– which, if they think about it; has already been done in many but no where near enough places and really is a accessibility need in addition to human professionals, not instead of.
I feel for us crips and those great folks at ticket stations who, maybe I’ve just been lucky but generally are wonderful, if not underpaid people working hard for the whole community. Not the sort to doge taxes and kick back in their prada and heated pools either.
I suppose… we will just have to eat the rich as we can’t afford food, use disablist politicians as accessibility ramps, some of them are old and stiff enough.. seems plenty to go around. (This is a joke, I’m not inciting violence, only exasperated resilience humour!)
Crip Power & safe community love to you all.
I feel like politicians are trying to say that both professional human employees enabling safe community transport for everyone, and especially for people with mix-Dis+Ability are not worth it?
Don’t really think these politicians are worth all that much… if they only people they serve in the name of all us people are themselves?