Doug Paulley's blog

disability, data protection, activism and other such

“Wheelchair accessible” Taxis and School Transport

Posted on by Doug Paulley

People who know me know that I’m the largest land mammal in the world. As such I struggle somewhat to get into most supposedly “accessible” taxis. I end up with my shoulders rammed against the ceiling; together with facing backwards it’s a recipe for discomfort and car-sickness.

dishevelledcabI thus prefer to use minibus taxis (or buses, though the less said about that the better…)

The problem is that between about 7:30am and 9:30 am, and between 2:30pm and 4:30pm, on most weekdays, it’s pretty much impossible to book wheelchair accessible minibuses in Leeds, because they are all already booked.

Word on the street (well, in the taxis) was that this is because the school transport service used them to transport pupils. So I thought I’d put in a Freedom of Information Request to Leeds council to find out exactly what the situation is.

The answer is that Leeds city council use an average of 255 taxis and private-hire vehicles every school day to take disabled kids to school; rising to a maximum of 291. Of those vehicles, an average of 57 are wheelchair accessible minibuses; rising to a maximum of 62. Leeds has a total of 61 private hire wheelchair accessible minibuses, and no wheelchair accessible minibus taxis.

The council use all available private hire wheelchair accessible minibuses every school day. They have done so for years, in my experience. This raises the following questions.

  • Why doesn’t Leeds City Council provide enough wheelchair accessible minibuses to take disabled kids to school? Surely it’d be cheaper?
  • Does Leeds City Council not give a stuff about other disabled people who might need the private hire wheelchair accessible minibuses?

I suspect the answer to the last one is “no” but I can’t prove it yet as the Council haven’t provided their impact assessment in a readable form.

The response provided more statistics that may be of interest. I list them below for all and sundry to pore over like the boring sod I am, but the headline figure is that of the 4,170 taxis and private hire vehicles, under 8% are wheelchair accessible; and less than 3% of private hire vehicles. “Purple pound” eh.

[table class=”table-striped” border=”2″ colalign=”center|center|center|center” caption=”Hackney Carriages (Taxis) in Leeds” width=”auto”] Seats,Accessible,Non-accessible,%
4,165,276,37.41%
5 to 7,92,4,95.83%
8+,0,1,0.00%
Total,257,281,47.77%
[/table]
[table class=”table-striped” border=”2″ colalign=”center|center|center|center” caption=”Private Hire Vehicles in Leeds” width=”auto”] Seats,Accessible,Non-accessible,%
4,19,3500,0.54%
5 to 7,10,227,4.22%
8+,61,162,27.35%
Total,90,3889,2.26%
[/table]
[table class=”table-striped” border=”2″ colalign=”center|center|center|center” caption=”All Taxis and Private Hire in Leeds” width=”auto”] Seats,Accessible,Non-accessible,%
4,184,3776,4.65%
5 to 7,102,231,30.63%
8+,61,163,27.23%
Total,347,4170,7.68%
[/table]
[table width=”auto” class=”table-striped” border=”2″ colalign=”center|center|center|center|center|center” caption=”Vehicle Usage for Pupil Transport”] ,Taxi,People carrier,Inaccessible Minibus,Accessible Minibus,Total
Average,125,23,50,57,255
Max,150,25,54,62,291
[/table]

The cost of orange peel

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Our responsible citizen, Luke Gutteridge, was walking somewhere in Broxbourne council’s jurisdiction one day when he accidentally dropped a 10p sized piece of orange peel without noticing. A council enforcement officer spotted him and pointed out he’d dropped it. Mr Gutteridge immediately apologised and picked it up. That’s where this story would have stopped, but it didn’t.

The enforcement officer issued a £75 fine for littering. Mr Gutteridge refused to accept the fine (understandably) and challenged it through the Magistrate’s Court. He was successful: the Council lost because the Magistrates considered that whilst he may have dropped a piece of litter, he hadn’t abandoned it.

The question is how much the authority’s farcical behaviour cost the taxpayer in this time of strict austerity. I put in a Freedom of Information Request to find out precisely that.

The Council initially told me that there were no costs because it was all done by their in-house legal team. I requested an internal review, because I know that all legal teams quantify their costs to claim off the other side if they win the case. The Council then told me that it had cost them £1,700 in lawyers time and £100 for the enforcement officer to attend Court.

I thought I’d bottomed the costs, but an article in the local paper, the Hertfordshire Mercury, has revealed that even that figure is incorrect. “It has now emerged the case cost taxpayers £2,057.” The Mercury quotes the Council’s response to my FOI request, leaving the reader with the very legitimate question as to why the Council gave me a lower figure.

Even this is lower than the actual cost, mind you, because as Mr Gutteridge won his case, the Council will be liable for his legal costs too.

One hopes that when the Auditor comes to examine the Council’s accounts, that the Council are somewhat more straightforward and honest than they appear to have been when complying with their legal obligation to provide accurate information in response to my FOI request.

Leonard Cheshire Disability’s CEO Clare Pelham on poverty

Posted on by Doug Paulley

Clare Pelham had this to say in Leonard Cheshire’s annual accounts 2014-2015:

Disabled people are more likely to be living in poverty and less likely to have savings than most. The pressures on social care funding available to councils in this country have increased and this has affected many disabled people.

She ought to know about poverty; after all, she’s only paid between £140,000 and £150,000 per year. She is one of 25 staff earning more than £60,000 – none of whom are directly engaged in the core activity of providing personal care and support to disabled people. Indeed, the number of staff in the charity earning £100,000 or more actually increased this year. To put that in context, MPs’ salaries are £67,060.

The report also lists the following risk and mitigation: (my emphasis)

Rising wages costs and our ambition to pay all staff at least the Living Wage could impact the financial sustainability of some or all of the Charity’s operations
  1. Annual increases in our fees requested from commissioners to offset the cost of wage increases and to support our efforts to work towards paying the Living Wage.
  2. Annual budget and business planning cycle.

 

This is perhaps progress, because even though Clare Pelham had this to say in September last year:

At the very least we should celebrate care as a wonderful career choice with great training; and nothing less than a living-wage should be acceptable.

the charity continues to pay its carers less than the living wage. They claim it’s because commissioners don’t pay them enough:

Commissioners are working under increasing financial pressure, so in many cases achieving living wage rates is not possible immediately

Yet until I kicked off about this in January, they’d not asked any commissioners to pay more so they could pay carers the living wage – and even now they’ve only recently written to a small proportion of commissioners to start the conversation. (At least I’ve forced them to go through the motions.)

In fact, the company reduced their spending on staff wages by over £2,000,000 in financial year 2014-2015 compared to 2013-2014, despite receiving an increased income of over £1,000,000 from fees paid by councils, part of their £7,500,000 overall increase in income. (£6,000,000 of the increased income is sat in their bank accounts – Goodness knows where the rest is.)  Check their annual reports and accounts (PDF file) – hold your nose to get past the odious self-congratulatory bollocks in the first half of the report; their figures for income are on p64, staff costs on p91, and the salaries of their most senior employees on p92.

One wonders if the reflection in their annual report may indeed by correct. It’s my view that they don’t give a stuff about their low wages to carers; they are only interested in appearing to give a stuff about their carers’ pay, and they don’t view the living wage as something to aspire to but as a threat to their business model.