Accessible Travel Policy

Our Commitments to providing assistance

CrossCountry is committed to helping people to use the railways confidently, taking into account the wide range of different needs of the communities we serve. CrossCountry strives to provide rail services which are truly accessible to all, so that customers can travel in confidence, safe in the knowledge that extra help is available at each stage of their journey, when needed.

Our commitment to helping all customers, particularly passengers with specific access needs to travel in confidence includes offering the following:

• assistance at our stations and our trains, or when making connections
• alternative accessible transport when our trains or the stations we serve are inaccessible
• clear, consistent and up-to-date customer information
• a range of discounts to reduce the cost of travel for disabled people and a companion

This document, our Accessible Travel Policy, sets out our policies and approach towards providing assistance for older and disabled customers, and those who simply need some extra help to make their journey.

Our customer leaflet, Making Rail Accessible provides a practical guide, explaining what we do to assist older and disabled customers who travel with us and the standards of service they can reasonably expect. It is available at all staffed stations which we serve and on our website: crosscountrytrains.co.uk/accessibletravel

In this document, we provide information to help you understand how we plan to meet your expectations when you are travelling with CrossCountry. We will explain how to find details of the assistance available, facilities and information you will need to help you to plan your journey.

Policy Summary

This document sets out our current arrangements for meeting the needs of customers who are disabled, or whose mobility is impaired. We will support independent travel as far as possible, with the standards of information and access raised across the board so that customers with mobility difficulties have more confidence in travelling.

At CrossCountry our policy is to maintain and improve, current standards of accessibility to services for people with disabilities(including those which are less obvious), the elderly or those whose mobility is impaired.

We will take account of provisions within the Equality Act 2010 working with other rail industry partners to ensure compliance where complementary services (such as station services) are supplied under contract. We strive to deliver a high standard of care to all of our customers.

We will work closely with Transport Focus, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) and other local and nationwide user groups representing the interests of disabled passengers, in order to continuously improve the levels of service we offer disabled customers. We also work closely with our station colleagues and suppliers to ensure that sufficient resource is made available, not only to deliver Passenger Assistance but to continuously look for ways to improve the passenger experience.

Our policy is a ‘live’ document and is always under development. We will carry out a full review annually with each version approved by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

Contact us

We welcome your comments and will take these into consideration in reviewing and implementing this Policy. Comments on any aspect of our service, including information about facilities which are not of the expected standard are welcome in any common format (such as audio or textphone).

You can contact us via:

• Telephone
• Fax
• Textphone
• E-mail
• Website
• X (formally known as Twitter)

Normally the CrossCountry Customer Relations team will respond to customers in writing, and if requested to do so will reply in large print, by telephone, textphone, or in any common audio format.

Alternative formats

Copies of this document are made available free of charge from all staffed stations which CrossCountry serve. The policy can be obtained in alternative formats on request such as large print and any common audio format. We will supply this within seven working days.

Travel Guides for People with Autism

We have produced a series of guides to help people with autism travel with us more comfortably & confidently. They outline the likely sensory changes on our routes.

Station accessibility information

While we do not operate any stations, we work with the relevant station operators to ensure they provide the best service possible to disabled customers. These operators also have their own Disabled People’s Protection Policy setting out their arrangements for assisting passengers at their stations.

The most up-to-date information on what is available at each station can be easily located at www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations.

The table below shows the station owner at each of the stations where we stop, along with contact details for their Customer relations departments.

On some occasions, to allow track improvement work to take place elsewhere, we serve the following stations

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