In June, we published a controversial Rail Delivery Group report on access that had been buried for two years. Though we received a lot of media interest upon our publication of this report, nobody outside certain sections of the rail press went forward with the story. This is despite the fact that Peter Rayner, one of the report’s co-authors, had broken ranks with the rail industry months earlier and spoken publicly of his concerns that GTR is now normalising a permanent breach of the Equality Act in its plans for DOO.
Today we publish further documents:
We now reveal further documents relating to the issues in the buried access report, which was quietly published on the Rail Delivery Group website a few days after we brought it to the public domain.
The following email correspondence takes place in June 2014 and begins with an email from Peter Rayner, a co-author of the buried RDG report and Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport’s Accessibility and Inclusion Forum.
In the following correspondence you will see that Peter Rayner wrote of his concerns to CILT’s Head of Policy, Daniel Parker-Klein; who then forwarded the email to Michael Woods, Head of Operations and Management Research at the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB).
As he describes in his email response, Michael Woods was responsible for a major piece of research into DOO at that time. He is referring to the RSSB report on DOO, which was itself hidden from the RSSB website when the issue of DOO became controversial. You might remember us providing a link to the document in November 2016, after the report was exposed in Private Eye.
The correspondence ends with an outraged email from Ann Frye, another co-author of the buried RDG report and Vice-Chairperson of CILT’s Accessibility and Inclusion Forum.
The email from Michael Woods portrays a shocking attitude to Peter Rayner’s concerns, and a great deal can be learned from it about what has been going on behind the scenes regarding plans for DOO. We point out two points in particular here and include the full correspondence below:
1. Michael Woods comments on the controversial RSSB report, the independence of which has long been denied by the rail unions:
“I am responsible for a major piece of research, complementing a previous study by a well known consultancy Steer Davies Gleave (you know the owner), into how to significantly extend the coverage of Driver Only Operation for Passenger Services (DOO(P)) to much more of the network, on behalf of RDG and ultimately DfT.“
The Steer Davies Gleave report on DOO has never been mentioned publicly until now. We have tracked down the only reference – it appears as a footnote in the RSSB report:
Given that so many buried and controversial documents are now coming to light – it is essential that we raise a call for the publication in full of the Steer Davies Gleave report, and ask why – as a foundational document to DOO – it has been buried for the past four years. We will be using the hashtag #SDGreport, and hope that you will join us in raising the attention of MPs and press to this issue.
2. Michael Woods comments on the rationale for DOO, confirming allegations that it is part of a project to move staff over to revenue protection duties:
“Having mobile teams of customer service staff able to check that customers have authority to travel (we are coming to the end of paper or card tickets, which will disappear in the next five or so years) and provide other assistance, but not one-per-train, is the way forward.”
A close reading of Michael Woods’ email will show that the RSSB considers the pre-booking of travel sufficient for those with access needs, and suggests that this forms part of their long-term solution for disabled people in regard to DOO: “PRM [Persons of Reduced Mobility] customers will still have access to the ATOC managed booking system to ensure they are met and aided…”
Read the full correspondence below:
abcommuters.com 
It is time to stop this mess with passenger safety.
Return the responsibility for safety to the Health and Safety Executive where it belongs, independent from rail companies
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I note Michael Woods suggests that it is less safe for a guard (and implies station staff) to be involved in the dispatch process due to “miscommunication”. Given that the majority of dispatch incidents investigated by the RAIB have been DOO, with the bulk being self dispatch via CCTV, perhaps he would like to show his evidence to justify this statement?
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