AN Oxford dad has called on others to sign a petition to create a law that wheelchair spaces on buses must be vacated for a user.
Andrew Chesterman, whose eight-year-old daughter Ecsenia uses a wheelchair, has had frequent problems trying to get others to vacate the designated space for her.
He said the law should be clarified.
Mr Chesterman, who lives in Blackbird Leys, said: “The law needs clarification and it needs to be clear-cut.
“There is a space for a pushchair and a space for a wheelchair user and I would prefer a very strict rule that each space is for each use, which would save bus companies a lot of hassle.”
The petition has been started after a Yorkshire wheelchair user Doug Paulley took FirstGroup bus company to the Supreme Court over its own wheelchair policy.
Mr Paulley, from Wetherby, tried to board a FirstGroup bus which had a sign saying ‘Please give up this space if needed for a wheelchair user’.
However a woman with a sleeping baby in a pushchair was sat in the space and refused to move, even when asked by the driver.
Mr Paulley argued that a bus driver must have the powers to help wheelchair users access designated spaces.
In January the Supreme Court said bus drivers must ‘consider’ taking further steps to persuade non-wheelchair users to move, although the ruling stopped short of making it a legal duty to move them.
Now Mr Paulley’s father Stuart has launched a petition calling on government to make it the law that someone in a wheelchair space on a bus must vacate it for a wheelchair user.
Mr Chesterman backed the petition saying the Supreme Court ruling was ‘not clear enough’.
He added: “It’s not us saying pushchairs shouldn’t get a space, it’s us saying that disabled people should have the same rights as everyone else.”
Sign the petition at petition.parliament.uk/petitions/184109
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