Accessible travel › Your rights
Your rights when you need help
Every train company has to follow the Office of Rail and Road’s guidance for its Accessible Travel Policy. Here’s what it says, in its own words, with what it means for you.
Book up to 2 hours before
Train companies can’t ask for more than 2 hours’ notice when you book help through Passenger Assist. After that, you can still turn up and ask.
Train companies must “not require passengers to give more than 2 hours’ notice when booking through Passenger Assist”.ORR guidance, section A1
If a station, train or replacement bus isn’t accessible to you
The train company must get you to the nearest or most convenient accessible station another way, at no extra cost. It won’t always be a taxi.
Train companies must “provide, without extra charge, an appropriate alternative accessible service to take disabled passengers to the nearest or most convenient accessible station from where they can continue their journey”. This covers a station you can’t use, a train you can’t use, and replacement transport, such as a bus during engineering works, that isn’t accessible to you.ORR guidance, section A4.7
If help you booked doesn’t turn up
Claim from the train company: it must give you appropriate redress, explain why the help wasn’t provided, and say what it’s doing so it doesn’t happen again. Claim from the company whose train you were travelling on, or due to travel on. If several companies let you down on one journey, you still only claim once.
“When assistance has been booked but has not been provided as confirmed by the operator, due to a failure of the assistance service, the operator must provide appropriate redress to a passenger that has submitted a claim.”ORR guidance, section A8.1
How reliable is booked help?
In its December 2025 review, the regulator found Southeastern, LNER and Network Rail (which runs some of the largest stations) the most reliable at delivering help that was booked, closely followed by Avanti West Coast. Northern, South Western Railway and West Midlands Trains were the least reliable. Across Britain, 11% of passengers said they received none of the help they had booked. Read ORR’s review.
Read ORR’s Accessible Travel Policy guidance (PDF). Each train company publishes its own Accessible Travel Policy, which follows it.
The Office of Rail and Road’s words are quoted from its Accessible Travel Policy guidance (October 2025) and passenger assistance benchmarking (December 2025), under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Kettle is made by DB Five Ltd and is independent of National Rail and the train companies.