National Centre for Accessible Transport (NCAT): A New Era for Disabled Travel

Phil Friend the Chair of the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC), talks to Gordon McCullough, the CEO of RIDC, about the launch of the National Centre for Accessible Transport. (NCAT)

What is the purpose of the centre? Why does NCAT matter? What part will RIDC play? How do we ensure that disabled people are at the heart of the project?

All these questions and many others are addressed in this entertaining conversation.

Transcript

Phil
Hello, everybody. My name is Phil Friend, and I'm the chair of the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers, RIDC. And I'm delighted to have with me somebody I know quite well now, Gordon McCullough, who I'm sure you all know, too, is the chief executive officer of RIDC. And Gordon has been very heavily involved in work around the National Centre for Accessible Transport, which is what we wanted to just spend a few minutes talking about today so that you've got a sense of this project and what's going on. So Hello Gordon, how are you? 

 Gordon
I'm very well Phil, how are you doing? 

 Phil
I'm very well, thank you. Yes, so let's get straight into it. Gordon what is the National Centre for Accessible Transport? Enlighten us. 

Gordon
Very good question. and the right place to begin. So. About a year ago, Motability, the charity started a competition to find a consortium to run an evidence centre, as they called it. A thing that would bring together research, knowledge, experience of people's any mode of transport, and try and come up with solutions to make that transport more accessible. And so as part of the competition, RIDC got involved with Coventry University, who led the consortium in the bid to create this evidence centre rationale being that lots of research has gone on trying to sort of understand and unpick why disabled people find using public transport or private transport so difficult because of all the barriers or put in their way and to look at us as a system rather than individual parts of a journey from really understand from the moment somebody wants to leave their home to the moment they reach their destination, how could that be improved through the use of existing knowledge, through new research? And more important than anything else, the involvement of disabled people right through that process. So it was really to try and inspire transport commissioners, people who set policy. Transport providers or anybody who has a stake in that system to understand the issues, to understand the experiences, to understand the aspirations of the disabled, people wanting to travel just like everybody else. So that's what the evidence centre is about. And we called it the National Centre for Accessible Transport, because that's what it will be. It will be a centre to bring together all of that knowledge, all that experience, all of the different parts of the system together to try and come up with a solution. So it's a really, really exciting initiative. Motability have put £20 million to it over the next seven years and as you would imagine, we really hope that's just the beginning of their investment. But it is, it is unique in the UK and certainly unique in the world that an initiative like this has ever come about to bring together all of that knowledge and experience to come up with solutions in a strategic and systemic way. So we're really, really delighted to be involved in it.

Phil
So now obviously you've alluded to this, but there's a consortium, it's a group of organisations, isn't it, brought together for this purpose. What's the RIDC I mean, you and I know what RIDC is about, but what's RIDC's role inside this consortium? What are we going to deliver? 

Gordon
A mechanism through which disabled people will be able to get involved in research or in setting solutions and coming up with solutions. So we're going to create a new panel RIDC already has a panel of 3600 disabled people right across the UK, and we're going to replicate that model because it seems to work to get people who want to make a difference together in one place and use them and work with them as a resource. So we're going to create something called the Community of Accessible Transport Hub CAT. Well, we It's really a panel of disabled people who want to make transport accessible and their involvement will be through a wide range of different ways. So we will do surveys with the focus groups there will be user testing, but we really want to get disabled people in a room with transport providers and those who set policy so that each begins to understand in a much more meaningful way the challenges and difficulties that they both face and come up with a shared solution. So the community of accessible transport, disabled people will sign up to that and that RIDC will run that. And our knowledge and experience of working with disabled people in a wide range of research is really why we're there and what we will do. But of course in a consortium it has to be collective, so we'll get it. We will put our views and our tenpenny worth path if that's the way to describe it into the whole operation of the evidence centre, because it's not just about research, it will be about influence and policy influencing politicians, stimulating small, medium sized enterprise led by disabled people to take the evidence and come up with the solutions that may in time actually mean that we no longer talk about accessible transport for disabled people. We're just talking about transport. The disabled people can use. 

Phil
How many people roughly do you think we need on this new panel on CAT 

Gordon
Oh, 

Phil
Cat? What are we looking for? 

Gordon
With any panel, the more, the better. We want a wider range of backgrounds, impairments, experiences, age, you name it, we want it to be as big as possible. There is a sort of upper limit to panels because you get too many people on it and some people start to feel a little bit disenfranchised. Well, I never hear from them. I never get involved. So somewhere, I don't know if I could pick a number out of the sky, but if you had 10,000 disabled people all giving their views and their insights into how transport could be made more accessible in the UK, I think that's a very, very powerful place to start from. So I think stage one would be about that. 

Phil
The people that are on the existing panel that might be watching us, listening to us, could they join 

Gordon
Yes, absolutely. 

Phil
the new panel?

Gordon
Yep.

Phil
Okay. So that that's that's worth knowing. 

Gordon
Yeah, we did a little survey in August last year in preparation for the competition, and we sent a survey about experiences of transport and we got over a thousand responses. About 75% said they would like to join a transport-focused panel. So we've already got 750 people from our panel. We took the time to sell that survey and interested. So in the course of time in the next probably in about the next month and a half, we will be emailing the panel and, inviting them to join the community of accessible transport. You have to fill in some of your details again about your impairment and your experiences of transport. But once you've done that, you're on the panel and then as the priorities of the centre get established, then we will be putting out sort of calls around different types of research and how people can get involved. We're also going to be looking for about 18 to 20 disabled people from the panel who will act as sort of, for want of a better word, ambassadors for the centre that will be able to share their experiences and their stories to the press or to policy people, and also to hold the sort of the board of the consortium to account tell us, actually you are doing things that don't relate to me at all? So there's a lot of little different roles in that. But yes, members of our RIDC panel will be invited to join if they want to, and I hope they do.

Phil
I mean, obviously, anyone watching or listening so needs to get their applications in. That would be great to hear from people. You mentioned earlier on in this conversation the extraordinarily important fact that disabled people must be at the heart of this project, and must be their voices must be heard. Those of us, like me, have been around a long time. Perhaps take a jaundiced or slightly cynical view about how much our consultation actually gets anywhere RIDC with its 3600-panel members and so on, and a track record of including disabled people is we've got that. But how do you and the consortium work together to ensure, because we're just one part of that consortium, ensure that disabled people really are at the heart of what's going on and that their voices are going to be heard?

Gordon
There are a number of ways we're going to ensure that that happens, that we don't start to make assumptions or go off and do things that don't include and involve disabled people. So at the very sort of highest level in terms of the governance of the whole consortium, there are going to be the six finding consortium members and they come from Coventry ourselves, from Connected Places, Catapult from WSP, a big transport consultancy and from Policy Connect. But there will also be six disabled people who have a knowledge and background in accessible transport. So at the very sort of the decision-making elements of the consortium will have disabled representation there. We'll also have an advisory group that will be made up of charities that have an explicit strategic objective around transport. They'll be involved, but we really want those small grassroots disabled-led organisations involved in that as well, not just the large nationals. And again, that's a way to help ensure that the work of the centre is grounded in the needs of disabled people. We have the panel and how we interact with the panel on this will be really interesting. It's the thing I'm most excited about because it will the priorities of the centre will be set by disabled people through a number of different mechanisms, the main one being the National Summit for Accessible Transport that we'll hold every 18 months and that's basically bringing everybody together. And so what should the centre do? What should it focus on? What are the things in the future that will be an issue for you trying to travel around the rail network, for example? And we were actually just recruiting a number of people at the moment as well as to work for RIDC on the initiative. And we have been very, very clear and very explicit that we will prioritize any disabled applicants. We want to make sure that we've got every part of the the centre and everything that RIDC does, that there's representation and input from disabled people. It'll be one of the core values of the entire thing that we do nothing without involving and listening to disabled people. 

Phil
And how does the if there's an impasse at that senior level, is there a mechanism for resolving kind of disputes or where disabled people perhaps are feeling they're not being listened to?

Gordon
It's a very good question Phil and I'm trying to write down how we do it. Hopefully, there isn't. But certainly, as you know with your experience of being on different governing body boards and stuff, you always try and look for consensus. You don't want to get into a period or a place where you're able to take votes on things at any particular time. So one would hope that there isn't with careful planning, with all the mechanisms I've talked about being in place. But when it comes to that point that disabled people feel that they've been able to contribute at every level, whether that's in the decision making, whether it's in the research or whether it's in the future direction of the consortium. There's an input in there. However, if there is an impasse and there is a conflict on the board, you go through different mechanisms by which votes happen and then the chair of the board will have the casting vote and will hopefully we have enshrined the values and principles of the consortium clearly enough that you can say, Well, actually what we were suggesting to do does not have the best interests of disabled people. We haven't listened to them. We haven't involved disabled people in every different aspect of what we are doing. And so therefore, we shouldn't be doing this. so. I think one of the attractive things about the consortium's bid to Motability was that we put the needs, the expectations and the voice of disabled people right at the centre of what we're doing. And so if we ever get to that point, which I hope we never do, Phil that there's enough, there are enough fallback mechanisms, enough sort of pieces of paper to say we have to put disabled people at the heart of it. And that will always be our sort of touchstone in terms of making decisions and moving forward. 

Phil
You are well aware that RIDC itself is run by disabled people. So the voice of disability is clearly there. This sounds very similar, although it's not quite a sort of organisation, but there's clearly disabled people engaged everywhere. So before we finish, it would be perhaps helpful just to think about so five, six, ten years from now, how will you look back, how do you want to see the work of NCAT in real life? What would it look like in five or six years' time, do you think? 

Gordon
Of course, you end with a very easy question, but I think what it will look like, we will see, we will not see a complete fundamental change in transport, whatever mode it is that a disabled person will look back on and say, well, that is objectively better on different than it was five or six years ago. I think what we will see, like with all of these things that require so many different elements to change, to make something happen, I think you'll start to see elements improve, now whether that's around not to run around the infrastructure that exists, to make things accessible, whether that's around the policy, whether it's a sort of wider societal thing whereby the attitudes of non-disabled people to disabled people in travelling begins to change. But I think what we want to see is, is change actually. And so one of the things that we're going to ask the community of accessible transport to monitor over time is their attitudes and their experiences of travelling around on trains, buses, cars, whatever. And so we're able to monitor and measure as our objective change. We can't, as a consortium, claim credit for everything that change in accessible transport. From this point onwards, all we can talk about is that we've contributed something to it. So it's quite nuanced and it's quite difficult. I don't I don't see like in six years time saying this is a thing that has been created as a result of the evidence centre. I think we have made a contribution to a bigger, wider systemic change and understanding that disabled people have as the same right as a non disabled person to go wherever they want, whatever mode of transport they want, when they want. So it's trying to take that compromise away and put the word choice into things. So it's not it's I don't I don't see it as being a thing necessarily. It's more about inspiring others who pull the levers of power to go. Actually, you're right. That is unacceptable. That should be changed and here is a. solution, the best example, I would say, is our work around electric charging points for non electric charging points, charging points for electric vehicles. That was a very long piece of work, but now, from doing that initial sort of gathering the evidence and understanding the problem, we now have BSI standards about how public charging points should be made accessible by people who install them that sounds like a small thing, but a massive step forward from the place where chargers were just going in and there was no consideration, no understanding of the need of disabled drivers. In fact, I would suggest that there was no understanding that disabled people drove cars or were interested in electric vehicles. If you look at some of the decisions that were made. So it's that type of thing. It's not a piece of kit. I don't think our first job is to set priorities, and the priorities are set by disabled people. And from that point on, we will begin and be able to map out exactly how we would bring about change or inspire others to bring about change. So it's a sort of politician's answer. I know I didn't say exactly what it was, 

Phil
I mean, you know, we know, for example, that trains and buses and so on are designed years ahead before we see them on the roads. So influencing design in that way is going to take many years. But obviously, you're engaged in that process. The quick wins might well be to look at processes, you know, booking a ticket, having assistance to get on the train or the bus or whatever those things might be easier to achieve. But I guess what I take away from this, Gordon, and I'm grateful for your time, is that disabled people will be at the front and centre of these conversations rather than Oh yes, and then they're the disabled ones, aren't there? We're right at the beginning. So as decisions are made as designs come off the drawing boards, it's obvious that disabled people are part of that. And well, all I can say is thank you, Gordon, for your time. We wish you well. Obviously, I, for one, will be keeping very close watch on how things develop and I feel very positive like you do about this is a very exciting adventure and good luck with it. Thank you very much. 

Gordon
Thanks a lot Phil