Railway stations with access for disabled people: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02000
Date received: 25 July 2018 
Date responded: 24 August 2018
 
Information requested

1. The number of railway stations that do not have access for disabled people;

2. Any complaints made, since 2007, regarding the lack of disability access on trains or sufficient seating available to accommodate persons with disabilities;

3. Any complaints made, since 2007, regarding train journeys where reference is made to disabilities.

Response

As previously advised the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’.

Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

1. The number of railway stations that do not have access for disabled people.

Your question directly above refers to access for disabled people and I am presuming you mean step free access. Therefore I can confirm that 254 stations in Scotland are wheelchair accessible and of the 105 remaining, 75 of these stations are inaccessible to both platforms whilst 30 of them have access to one platform.

2. Any complaints made, since 2007, regarding the lack of disability access on trains or sufficient seating available to accommodate persons with disabilities; 3. Any complaints made, since 2007, regarding train journeys where reference is made to disabilities.

In relation to your two questions above, under Regulation 10 (4) (a) I can confirm that Transport Scotland does not hold the information that you have requested.

Transport Scotland does not process complaints however some of the information you have requested is available from the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) and can be obtained from following these steps on the ORR’s website:

• Select the statistics tab - http://orr.gov.uk/statistics
• Select the published statistics tab - http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats
• Select the popular statistics tab - http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/popular-statistics
• Select the complaints handling tab - http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/popular-statistics/complaints-handling
• Select the data portal - http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/browsereports/14
• For complaints rate by Train Operating Company select the Table 14.9 tab - http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/report/html/bc4b0c6b-956e-4bce-9bdf-5b81545734f6
• For complaints rate by category select the Table 14.5 tab - http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/report/html/d1b088bb-cc1e-418f-b104-523b0a16f045

To note for complaints received against Accessibility Issues this can be found in Table 14.5.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses