Wheelchair user forced to crawl up train station stairs due to broken lifts

11 February 2024 , 13:30

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Station staff at Dalston station in north east London were heard joking that "she could use the lift if she wanted" after she finished her tiring, 15-minute climb (Image: Getty Images)

A disabled woman was forced to crawl up a flight of stairs at a London Overground station when a lift was broken.

To make things worse, staff were seen giggling as wheelchair user Jennie Berry had to shuffle up the stairs on her bottom. By the time she reached the top, a lift technician announced the lift was fixed.

Station staff at Dalston station in north east London were heard joking that "she could use the lift if she wanted" after she finished her tiring, 15-minute climb. The passenger filmed her ordeal after arriving late on Thursday night on an Overground train.

The 29-year-old said she was most annoyed at how the Transport for London (TfL) staff treated her. Assistance only appeared as she was three steps from the top of the stairs, where one man in an orange high-vis jacket could be heard telling the helpless passenger that the lift had been broken for a month, adding "Didn't you know?".

She said: "There was no signage from the station I'd left from to tell me the lift was out of order, and there was also no staff around on the platform to assist me in trying to get to another accessible station in the opposite direction and then try and get home from there.

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"So I crawled up this flight of stairs because my hotel was literally outside this station. As a wheelchair user, I'm not the first person this has ever happened to and I certainly won't be the last. Things need to change for disabled travellers and quickly."

Mark Evers, Chief Customer Officer at TfL, said: "We're deeply sorry for the distressing experience that Jennie Berry had while travelling with us and we are urgently looking into this incident with Arriva Rail London, who operates the London Overground on our behalf, to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

"We understand that lifts being out of service can have a significant impact on customers who rely on them, and we are committed to making transport in London more accessible. We are also working harder to ensure that lifts are repaired quickly and that information about their availability is published promptly. I regret that in this instance the necessary information wasn't readily available."

Zesha Saleem