Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Field audit (mystery shopping for the rail regulator)

Accessible Travel Policy Implementation: Review of unbooked assistance and Help Points

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/ridc-2022-orr-help-points/ · record checked 13 October 2026

  • Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC)
  • Office of Rail and Road

Government (commissioned by the Office of Rail and Road, Great Britain's rail regulator, from the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers, which ran the audits with its panel of disabled consumers; the report states that it is independent)

Summary

Disabled auditors' mystery-shop visits to 147 railway stations in Great Britain, checking assistance, signs and Help Points, including whether the Help Point had a working hearing loop.

Key findings

  • The executive summary's Context section dates fieldwork from mid-February 2020, with a pandemic pause in early March, to completion in mid-November 2021 after a late-September restart (printed pages 3-4).
  • 63 auditors from RiDC's consumer panel, including four expert reviewers, carried out 147 audits at 68 staffed and 79 unstaffed or partially staffed stations across 21 train operators; fieldwork began in February 2020, paused for the pandemic and was completed after a restart in September 2021. In its profile of auditors, 18 (23%) had a hearing impairment and 84% a mobility impairment.
  • Among 22 answers on whether the Help Point had a working hearing loop, 81.8% agreed and 18.2% disagreed (Appendix 2, Table L, printed page 77). The table does not establish that these were 22 distinct auditors; the study includes multiple audits per auditor.
  • Among the reasons auditors gave for not using a Help Point, one wrote: "I am hard of hearing and had difficulty hearing the reply", and another could not hear properly because of background noise and the Help Point being out in the open.
  • Only 41% of Help Points showed what to do if the Help Point did not work.
  • 82% of auditors heard departure or arrival announcements at staffed stations against 68% at unstaffed or partially staffed stations.

Limits

The loop result rests on 22 answers and the report does not say how auditors judged that a loop was working (for example with a telecoil or a loop listener); there were no field-strength measurements. Help Points only, not ticket offices or trains, and the sample was weighted to mobility impairment. The report gives its own date as May 2022; ORR published it in July 2022.

Read the original

www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/accessible-travel-policy-implementation-review-july-2022.pdf

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Cited in

Cite this source

Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC). Accessible Travel Policy Implementation: Review of unbooked assistance and Help Points. Office of Rail and Road. May 2022. https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/accessible-travel-policy-implementation-review-july-2022.pdf (accessed 13 October 2026).

The accessed date is when this library last checked the link; use the date you read it. To point readers to this summary instead, link to https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/ridc-2022-orr-help-points/

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