Doug loses fight for right to a bus space

Doug Paulley

FORMER Hulme Grammar School pupil Doug Paulley has lost a battle to require bus companies to have a policy to force parents with buggies to make way for wheelchair users.

The Court of Appeal had been asked to rule after a woman with a sleeping baby refused to move her pushchair from a wheelchair bay so Mr Paulley could use it, forcing him to catch a later bus.

The disability rights campaigner had been travelling from his home in Wetherby to visit his parents in Oldham when the incident happened.

Bus company First Group was ordered to pay £5,500 damages to Mr Paulley at an earlier hearing at Leeds County Court.

Recorder Paul Isaacs declared the company should have taken measures to ensure he was not at a disadvantage when he tried to get on the bus. But the Appeal Court yesterday ruled in favour of First Bus.

Lord Justice Underhill said: “Wheelchair users will occasionally be prevented by other passengers from using the wheelchair space on the bus.

“Sometimes there will be a reasonable justification for that happening, but sometimes there will not.

“I do not, however, believe that the fact that some passengers will — albeit rarely — act selfishly and irresponsibly is a sufficient reason for imposing on bus companies a legal responsibility for a situation which is not of their making and which they are not in a position to prevent.

“In the present state of the law something must still be left to the good sense and conscience of individuals.”

Mr Paulley’s case was funded by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. His legal team has asked for permission to to appeal to the Supreme Court.

He told the Oldham Chronicle: “I am disappointed we have lost but there are quite a lot of rights in there that people now have. The bus companies now have to do everything short of chucking people off the bus.”
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