Activist’s ‘genius’ two-year plan opens door to more generous compensation for disabled rail passengers

A disabled activist has won praise for a successful two-year plan that has exposed the “ridiculously-low” awards handed out by the Rail Ombudsman to disabled passengers. 

Doug Paulley’s efforts have led to the ombudsman issuing what appears to be its highest-ever compensation award for a failure to provide assistance, opening the door to more generous payments for countless future disabled passengers.

He began his campaign because he was frustrated at the ombudsman’s failure to award a fair level of compensation to disabled passengers who had faced discrimination when trying to obtain passenger assistance on a rail journey.

The ombudsman’s average award for a passenger assistance failure is just £146, far lower than such cases are likely to receive if a case for discrimination under the Equality Act is taken through the county court.

In an attempt to prove his argument, Paulley launched a court case and a complaint to the ombudsman at the same time, following an incident in March 2023 at Euston station in London.

This led to an award from the ombudsman of just £125, but he rejected this sum and completed the court case, rejecting multiple offers of out-of-court settlements from Network Rail until the court awarded him £1,325 in compensation.

Paulley then used the two figures – £125 and £1,325 – to persuade the ombudsman to review its framework for setting the level of awards for disability discrimination, arguing that it did not appear to meet its aim that awards were underpinned by “moral fairness” and “natural justice”.

Fellow accessible transport activist Sam Jennings also began to challenge the unfair ombudsman payouts, pointing out on her campaigning website Disabled By the Railway that average ombudsman awards for 2023 were only about £100 (PDF), even for significant acts of discrimination against disabled rail passengers that might lead to thousands of pounds of compensation under the Equality Act if taken through the civil courts.

When Paulley faced another passenger assistance failure, at Birmingham New Street station in August 2024, he lodged another complaint with the ombudsman.

This time, even though it was a less serious failure, the ombudsman awarded him £1,200, nearly 10 times the level he had been offered after the more serious Euston assistance failure.

A staff member at Birmingham New Street had failed to provide him with the assistance he had booked for a connecting train to Bristol because his incoming train had arrived late and the staff member had other assistance requests to deal with.

Paulley had to make his own way to the platform for the connecting train and position himself by the train door, to prevent its departure, until another member of staff eventually arrived with a ramp just before it was due to depart.

In its ruling, the ombudsman said legal advice it had taken suggested the assistance failure by Network Rail was “a failure to provide ‘reasonable adjustments’ in accordance with the Equality Act 2010” and although the ombudsman “does not have the same powers as a court and cannot make a declaration under the Equality Act 2010… the impact of the breach will be assessed in considering the level of compensation to award”.

Although it was “a one-off assistance failure… the incident occurred in a public place, and caused [Paulley] inconvenience and distress”, the ombudsman said.

The £1,200 awarded to Paulley is believed to be the highest amount it has ever awarded for an assistance failure.

In the five years between 2018 and 2023 (PDF), the highest the ombudsman awarded for an assistance failure was just £1,000.

This week, Paulley praised the ombudsman for listening to his concerns and making a “step change” in the level of its awards, which he told the ombudsman was “brilliant news for discriminated-against disabled people, both in comparative ease of access to justice for failures and in bringing home to rail service providers the impact of such failures”.

Paulley says he is now more likely to recommend other disabled passengers seek justice through the ombudsman, as its new approach is more likely to be in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Equality Act.

He told Disability News Service that the ombudsman’s new approach was a “significant change”, and that hundreds of disabled passengers have previously received awards that were probably about 10 per cent of what they should have been.

He said countless other disabled people would have been dissuaded from appealing to the ombudsman because “they knew any award would be at an insulting level”.

Paulley said the low levels of ombudsman awards were “complicit with the industry’s undervaluing of disabled people’s discrimination and experiences”.

He said: “It shouldn’t have taken activism to make them do this, and it is still limited, and everything is still very far from perfect, but I think it may make a difference.”

He said that if a substantial proportion of future accessibility cases result in ombudsman awards of more than £1,000 it should make rail companies take the issue of assistance failures “a bit more seriously”.

He added: “Previously I would be more reticent to recommend the ombudsman to discriminated-against travellers but now I’m a bit happier doing so.

“The rail industry needs to recognise assistance failure as a significant discrimination event rather than a customer services issue to be fobbed off with token awards.”

Jennings said Paulley’s victory had “solved a huge problem with the Rail Ombudsman, which came to light in a set of research reports published by the Office of Rail and Road last year”. 

She said: “It finally forces the ombudsman to act in line with the Vento scale – the established guide from the senior courts that is used to assess compensation due in discrimination cases. 

“In the year 2023, the ombudsman’s average compensation award was just £101 – just a fraction of the minimum £1,200 due under Vento banding.”

But she said there was “still a huge problem” because the ombudsman can only award a maximum of £2,500, which is near the foot of the Vento scale, whereas the highest Vento banding reaches £58,700 for the most serious cases.

And she said the ombudsman’s own reports show it is “barely even functioning for disabled people”, having received just 316 complaints in five years.

Jennings said: “I’ve personally experienced that many access fails in that time, so what about the other millions of disabled people in Britain?”

She added: “The ombudsman must be reformed to be fully compliant with the Equality Act 2010, and to make awards in line with Vento banding.”

Emily Yates, a disabled researcher in equality and human rights, and co-founder of the Association of British Commuters, said: “Doug Paulley’s two-year strategy has been proven an act of genius, and that’s no mere compliment. 

“He has gone through every possible step to prove the holes in the system, arguing the case for equality law compliance at each stage, and backing this up by comparison with other experiences within the same system. 

“It’s like a model for all campaigners of how the best legal activism should be done, and what can be achieved by it.

“This has created a precedent that should, by rights, change Rail Ombudsman practices in the UK forever. 

“Promoting this precedent and campaigning for reform should now be a priority for all disabled people’s organisations working on rail accessibility complaints and transport discrimination.”

Asked whether it would use Paulley’s case as a precedent for future awards, a Rail Ombudsman spokesperson said in a statement: “As a general policy, the Rail Ombudsman does not comment publicly on individual cases to maintain confidentiality and fairness in our processes. ”Potential resources for other disabled people considering complaints or legal action for a failure of rail passenger assistance include this guide (PDF) by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and this guidance (PDF) from the presidents of the Employment Tribunals in England and Wales, and in Scotland

Credit for this article goes to the Disability News Service