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