Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson had to ‘crawl off train’ at King’s Cross due to lack of assistance
The 11-time Paralympic gold medallist said she waited 16 minutes for assistance before deciding to get out of her wheelchair and crawl off the train
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Your support makes all the difference.One of Britain’s most famous Paralympians says she is angry that she had to “crawl off a train” at London King’s Cross station because there was no one to help her.
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson travelled on a train from Leeds to London King’s Cross on Monday evening but arrived at 10pm to find no one there to help, and said she waited 16 minutes before she got off herself.
The gold medallist, who has spina bifida, was a wheelchair racer and competed in five Paralympic Games between 1988 and 2004. She claimed 11 gold medals, plus four silvers and a bronze, and was created a crossbench life peer in 2010.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she missed her 7.15pm train and got on the 7.45pm service, but when she arrived at King’s Cross there was no one to meet her.
“I waited five minutes before I put anything on social media, because that’s… you’re meant to leave sort of five minutes,” she added.
“But after 16 minutes of sitting at King’s Cross, no one in sight – there were a couple of cleaners, but they’re not insured or able to help me off – I decided that I’d crawl off the train.
“So I’m going to Paris later today, I’ve got a few bags, had to chuck them on the platform, get out of my chair, sit on the floor right by the door, which is not particularly pleasant, and then crawl off.”
She added: “There was no one around. I mean, I was pretty angry last night.”
Baroness Grey-Thompson said: “Disabled people have a legal right to turn up and go. So I had booked assistance, but I hadn’t made that train, so, legally, I am allowed to turn up and ask to get on a train.
“So my view is, once somebody has put me on a train, I have a contract, which means somebody should meet me at the other end.
“The booking system is not particularly fit for purpose. Every train company does things slightly differently.
“You know, we were meant to have level boarding in the UK January 1st 2020, under the Disability Discrimination Act, every single government has kicked the can down the road.
“It is now going to be 100 years before we have level boarding and I can get on a train without the permission or support of a non-disabled person.
“So I’m still quite angry this morning. I thought I was over it, but I’m not, because I can still just about get off the train if I have to.
“There are loads of people who can’t, and it was only the train manager on the 11 o’clock train going north saw me getting off the train that somebody came along. If they hadn’t have seen that, I don’t know whether I would have got off. I would have had to have pulled the emergency cord and then delayed the train going north.”
She said she had a call from a senior member of LNER on Monday night and they had also been in touch on Tuesday morning to say an investigation has started.
Since speaking out about the incident, the 55-year-old said that she had experienced abuse from people saying she should “stay at home”.
She wrote on X/Twitter: “To the ableist people who have said I should stay at home, not work, not expect to travel on a bank holiday, not travel on my own…. Ummm not happening.”
Asked why the Disability Discrimination Act has been “kicked down the road”, she said: “Some of it’s cost, some of it is when trains are being procured level boarding is not in the contract, there are some companies who build trains who don’t really want to build level boarding, so make them much more expensive. And it all just gets accepted and we get forgotten about.
“And there are some, you know, brighter sort of sparks – Liverpool have a closed loop, they have level boarding. Some of the Greater Anglia trains have level boarding. But it’s an old network, I accept it. It’s not cheap or easy to do, but at what point is the Government, any government, going to step in and say ‘OK, we need to make a change’.”
LNER managing director David Horne wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “My sincere apologies for this, Tanni.
“Something has clearly gone wrong here and we’ve let you down.
“We’ll investigate what went wrong and share the details.”
An LNER spokesman said: “We are sorry to understand there has been an issue at London King’s Cross station on Monday evening.
“We are in the process of investigating this and are in contact with the customer directly.”
Legislation on the accessibility of mainline trains dates back to 1998.
The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 required that all trains be accessible by 2020, but many carriages still do not comply with the rules.
Alison Kerry, head of communications at disability equality charity Scope, said: “This is a sad reminder that far too often disabled people get treated like second-class citizens.
“On the eve of the Paralympics it highlights how much further we need to go; it shouldn’t be this difficult for a wheelchair user to use public transport.
“For the Paralympics to have a legacy beyond sport, everyone needs to improve their understanding and attitudes towards disability.”
The Department for Transport has been approached for comment.