All of us who travel on public transport have seen seats and spaces allocated for disabled users. But what does that actually mean?

What happened?

In a recent case, a disabled person in a wheelchair wished to board a bus but the wheelchair space was occupied by a sleeping child in a pushchair.  The bus driver asked the child’s mother to move the pushchair but she refused.  As a consequence, the disabled person could not board the bus. He later sued the bus company for disability discrimination and won. 

The bus company took the case to the Court of Appeal and succeeded. However, the disabled person took the case further and appealed to the Supreme Court. 

The disabled person argued that the bus driver should have insisted on the wheelchair space being vacated by the mum with her pushchair as they were not disabled, and that he should have ‘enforced’ that insistence if necessary. 

The outcome

The Supreme Court rejected that argument, but it did accept that the bus driver should have done more than simply make the request for the passenger to vacate the space.  It said that the duty to make reasonable adjustments indicated a policy of ‘require and pressurise’ and that the driver should have gone as far as he felt reasonable in the circumstances to insist that the space was vacated.  The Supreme Court said that it was not enough for the driver to simply request that the non-disabled person vacate the space without taking any further action.

Whilst this does not mean that bus drivers have to physically remove non-wheelchair users who unreasonably refuse to vacate a space, it does require bus operators to instruct their drivers to do more than simply make a request.

What this means for future cases...

This decision could impose enormous practical difficulties because drivers will have to determine how to proceed depending on the particular circumstances.  From the Supreme Court’s judgment it seems that drivers might be required to remonstrate with a passenger who refuses to vacate a seat. This could result in heated arguments and/or an altercation where the bus driver’s personal safety would be at risk.  It could also cause delay to other passengers on the bus and have an impact on that route’s timetable.

Although the Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeal decision, this case was far from straightforward.  One of the Supreme Court judges commented that it may be an area of law that would benefit from fresh legislative consideration.

We need to remember that this judgment does not only apply to bus operators.  Any service provider – especially other transport operators – should review their policies to ensure they don’t put disabled people at a disadvantage.  They will also need to train their staff on how best to enforce their policies; a task that may prove difficult!