Doug Paulley's blog

disability, data protection, activism and other such

Northern’s assistance booking

Posted on by Doug Paulley
Northern's logo turned into a sad emoticon
Arriva Rail North’s logo (corrected)
Wheelchair users travelling by train are asked to book assistance for ramps etc. But disabled people frequently experience substantial difficulties when booking, caused by train operating companies’ failures in information and procedure. 

This is a recurring problem across all train operating companies, but Carillion – the company Arriva Rail North subcontracts to make such bookings – are the worst I’ve experienced. (And that’s saying something.)

Northern and Carillion

Northern Rail’s assisted travel booking and customer relations staff were all based in Leeds. When Arriva took over the franchise, they told them all to move to a Sheffield call centre, or leave. Understandably a lot left, and took their experience and expertise with them.

Carillion's logo
Carillion’s logo

Arriva Rail North advertised their new assistance booking line as being open 24 hours, 363 days a year. They outsourced this function to Carillion, a rail infrastructure maintenance company. Carillion had never dealt with assistance booking before. The results were predictable.

Yesterday evening is a case in point. I wanted to book assistance for two simple journeys: Skipton to Hexham changing Carlisle, and Hexham to York changing Newcastle. 

The telephone call took 1 hour 6 minutes. Even then the assistance wasn’t successfully booked.

Untrained, inexperienced staff with no backup

The reason for this is that the booking staff member had never taken a booking before. He had only worked in the organisation for two weeks. He had watched colleagues booking assistance and been given the script to use, then he had been put straight onto the assistance booking line. It seemed like he had never been trained how to take bookings, and certainly not formally trained.

I was his first ever assistance booking (God help him!) There was nobody else he could ask because he was on his own; there were no bosses or other assistance booking staff on shift. He was very nervous and made many mistakes (understandably). Talk about being thrown in at the deep end…

After the hour-plus attempting to book the assistance, he had to admit defeat, because he was unable to book the wheelchair space on Virgin Trains East Coast. He said he would get somebody else to sort the booking and email me this morning at 8am. (Unsurprisingly, I haven’t had that email.)

Northern’s Disabled People’s Protection Policy

Northern’s Disabled People’s Protection Policy (which has been approved by the Office of the Rail and Road and which Northern are thus legally obliged to comply with) says:

To book assistance please call our dedicated freephone number (also free to mobiles), 0800 138 5560. Lines are open 24 hours a day, every day that we are running.

We can book assistance for your whole rail journey, even where part of the journey is with other train operators.

That’s plainly not true, because they do not deliver on their promises.

Recurrent problems

Since Arriva took over the franchise, I’ve had the following problems.

  • A weekend of all calls to the line being cut off after the recorded introduction
  • Staff not being able to use Passenger Assist 
  • Staff not knowing how to use text relay
  • Staff booking alternative taxis for inaccessible stations, from firms tens of miles away who don’t know the area
  • Staff telling me to do a 100 mile round trip to get round a closed line, because the rail replacement bus they’d booked was inaccessible.
  • Staff refusing to book assistance unless I had first bought a ticket, making me pay more than I would be charged if I bought the ticket on the day (rail rovers etc.)
  • Staff telling me I would have to pay for the rail replacement taxi because their rail replacement bus was not wheelchair accessible
  • Staff unable to find out whether scheduled services hauled by Tornado had a wheelchair space
  • Staff being unable to book wheelchair spaces on connecting companies’ services
  • Staff telling me I had been banned from booking assistance because I have attempted to book wheelchair spaces on Northern’s services, whereas I have never done that. The staff member had misinterpreted an instruction to flag my assistance bookings for checking by a manager due to the number of erroneous bookings I had experienced.
  • Multiple other incidents.

I have brought this shabby and unacceptable treatment to the attention of senior managers in Northern a number of times, but it hasn’t improved – in fact yesterday’s abortive assistance booking demonstrates it is getting worse.

Impact

We can have no confidence that the booking has been made correctly, so we are left sweating throughout the journey – will the wheelchair space be booked by somebody else and unavailable? Will the person with ramps turn up or will we be unwillingly carried along until the terminus?
Non-disabled people can plan and book their journey in seconds or minutes, with relative confidence they can carry out their journey. Through the common contempt organisations like Northern demonstrate for services for disabled people, we are obliged to expend considerable time, energy and dogged determination to plan, book and carry out the same journey.

Cambridge council’s U-turn on taxi disability rights

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Cambridge Council’s August taxi licensing newsletter (pdf) has this correction.

In the March 2017 edition of the Taxi newsletter we published an article entitled ’Important Changes to Equality Law’. The article concerned the recent changes to equality law and the duties imposed on drivers of wheelchair accessible vehicles.
Following publication of the newsletter it came to light we made an error in this article, which we would now like to rectify.
For clarification, the requirements for drivers of wheelchair accessible taxi and private hire vehicles are a policy requirement and not a legal requirement: (their emphasis)

  • Transport wheelchair users in their wheelchair
  • Provide passengers in wheelchairs with appropriate assistance
  • Charge wheelchair users the same as non-wheelchair users

This is very different from their March newsletter:

"Transport accessibility" section in Cambridge council's March 2017 newsletter
Excerpt from March 2017 newsletter

From the 6th April 2017 …In a change to the law, drivers found to be discriminating against wheelchair users face fines of up to £1,000 as part of provisions being enacted from the Equality Act.

 

The same “error” is still present in Cambridge Council’s Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Licensing Policy, and in their Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Taxi Handbook.

15.7 The Equality Act 2010 places certain duties on licensed drivers to provide assistance to people in wheelchairs and to carry them safely. There are similar requirements on drivers in relation to the treatment of passengers with an assistance dog. Neither drivers nor operators of licensed vehicles can make any extra charge or refuse to carry such passengers.

Legislative provisions and legal requirements

Drivers of wheelchair accessible vehicles must:

  • Carry a passenger seated in a wheelchair
  • Charge wheelchair users the same fare as non-wheelchair users; the meter, where used, must only be started when the journey begins
  • …

Despire correcting their newsletter, the Council has not corrected their Policy or Handbook.

Why have the Council not implemented the new taxi wheelchair law?

The Council would have to create a list of the wheelchair accessible taxis licensed by them. The drivers of said taxis would then be subject to this law. But the Council has chosen not to produce the list. (For more info, see my blog on the subject.)

The strong implication is that the Council told all taxi drivers they would be subject to this law, but changed its mind when it realised it would have to do some minor office work.

Taxi drivers in their area are not subject to a criminal law obligation against discriminating against wheelchair users (as intended by Parliament) all because the Council refuses to do some office work.

What message does that give to disabled people?

Is ICO’s insistence data subjects complain to controllers before S42 assessments legitimate?

Posted on by Doug Paulley

If anybody feels that an organisation may have failed to follow the Data Protection Act whilst dealing with their data, they can ask the ICO for an assessment about whether that processing is likely to have been OK or not, under S42 of the Data Protection Act. The ICO are obliged to respond unless they need the subject to supply more ID or more explanation as to what processing the subject’s concerned about. Those are the ONLY exemptions the ICO can use to avoid having to undertake a S42 assessment.

S42.2 On receiving a request under this section, the Commissioner shall make an assessment in such manner as appears to him to be appropriate, unless he has not been supplied with such information as he may reasonably require in order to—
(a) satisfy himself as to the identity of the person making the request, and
(b) enable him to identify the processing in question.

It is usually a good idea for the data subject to complain to the data controller before bothering the ICO. It’s often probably the best way to get the issue resolved speedily and with the least of fuss, to the benefit of both the data controller and the data subject. It also means that the ICO are less likely to be swamped with S42 requests about stuff that could have been sorted a lot easier by a simple email.

However, that isn’t appropriate in all cases.

My reading of the Act is that the ICO are under an obligation to respond to a data subject’s S42 request for assessment irrespective of whether the data subject has complained to the data controller. The ONLY factors they can take into consideration as to whether they must undertake an assessment or not, is whether they have enough ID to be confident the data subject is who (s)he says (s)he is, and whether they’ve been given enough information to identify the processing in question.

S42 lists other factors that the authority can take into account – but these factors are only to be taken into account when considering how the authority will go about the assessment, not IF they will undertake an assessment. They still have to do the assessment, irrespective of these factors. But in any case, these factors do not include whether or not the data subject has made a complaint to the data controller.

S42.3 The matters to which the Commissioner may have regard in determining in what manner it is appropriate to make an assessment include—
(a) the extent to which the request appears to him to raise a matter of substance,
(b) any undue delay in making the request, and
(c) whether or not the person making the request is entitled to make an application under section 7 in respect of the personal data in question.

So as far as I’m concerned, the law does not give the ICO latitude to insist data subjects complain to the data controller before submitting a S42 request. It doesn’t allow the ICO to refuse to undertake an assessment where the data subject hasn’t submitted a complaint direct to the data controller.

I submitted a S42 request recently, having not complained to the data controller first. The ICO responded:

I note that you also sent us a copy of an email received from ‘Charity Checkout’, which appears to be a trading name of ‘Online Giving Ltd’.  There is no other copy correspondence to show that you have raised a concern with ‘Online Giving Ltd’ in writing and allowed time for its response. You would need to do this before the ICO could progress any concern about this third organisation.

I remonstrated:

This approach is not in compliance with obligations under S42 of the Data Protection Act, which states:

I parroted the above in detail, showing that the ICO cannot legitimately insist on subjects complaining to the controller before the ICO is obliged to conduct an assessment.

It always bugs me when the ICO state that they will not make a S42 assessment unless the data subject has raised their concern with the data controller. This is evidently ingrained and standard practice in the ICO, but it has no basis in law. No doubt the ICO would like it to be in the law, acts as if it is the law and doubtless often it achieves a speedier resolution if the data subject  complains to the data controller, but the fact is that the Information Commissioner is obliged to undertake an assessment whether or not the data subject has raised their concern with the data controller.

As the ICO expects and requires data controllers to comply with the detail of the Data Protection Act, it should do so itself. S42 does not give the Commissioner the right to reject S42 requests on the basis that the data subject has not raised a concern with the data controller. That’s the letter of the law, and the ICO should comply with it.

Please register a complaint that the ICO’s standard practice in this specific is not in compliance with the Commissioner’s obligation under S42 of the Data Protection Act.

They gave their final response:

You are dissatisfied with this approach and do not consider that section 42 of the Act allows the ICO to require that you contact the organisation prior to requesting an assessment.

My Findings

The requirement for individuals to have raised their concerns with the organisation involved is part of the ICO’s operational policy, rather than being written into the legislation.

You will appreciate that the ICO has limited resources, and we cannot take action in response to every concern reported to us. Ultimately our role is to improve information rights practices, and we put our efforts into taking action in those areas where we can make the biggest improvement to the practice of those we regulate. We are an independent body and do not work on behalf of individuals

As explained on our website, we believe that the organisation responsible for a data protection matter should deal with it in the first instance. We expect organisations to take concerns seriously and work with the data subject to try to resolve them. Most organisations will want to put things right when they have gone wrong, and learn from complaints that are raised with them – further, it is best practice for them to have an effective complaints procedure.

If the organisation has been unable, or unwilling, to resolve an information rights concern, the data subject can then raise the matter for us to evaluate whether there is an opportunity to improve information rights practice.

For all of these reasons we are committed to giving organisations the opportunity to respond to public concerns before they are raised with us as the regulator.

I trust that this explains our approach.

Well yes, it explains their approach, but it doesn’t explain how their approach complies with the legislation, which was the sole point in my complaint. “We think our approach is better” isn’t a valid response to a complaint that said approach is not in accordance with their legal obligations.

However, they have successfully stonewalled me through their single-stage complaints procedure, so they won’t consider the issue any further. I wouldn’t want to bother the ombudsmen, partly as I haven’t experienced sufficient harm and in any case, as the ICO pointed out – “If your complaint relates to the way in which we have interpreted the law then the Ombudsman cannot help you.” The only further avenue suggested was, “If you want to challenge our interpretation of the law, you should consider seeking legal advice.” They presumably know that it doesn’t merit that.

I’m therefore reduced to publishing a whiny blog explaining how I’ve been wronged, on an obscure part of the Internet where nobody will read it — similar to the likes of Alan Dransfield.

But I still think I’m right, that the ICO are failing to comply with their legal obligations, and that they have succeeded in their intent of stonewalling me throughout the statutory procedures ostensibly designed to make sure they take on board complainants’ legitimate concerns and change accordingly. (Again, just like Dransfield. Perhaps we’re long-lost relatives or something.)