Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Network Rail have any plans to improve the accessibility for disabled people of Raynes Park station in the London Borough of Merton; and if so, what improvements will be made, and what are the expected completion dates for those works.

Raynes Park is currently accessible to two of the platforms (1 and 2) so improvements would be needed to only the other two platforms, the southwest bound ones.

Much of our station infrastructure is Victorian and is therefore not accessible to many disabled passengers. In recognition of the scale of the problem there is a gradual improvement approach and stations are selected by annual footfall, industry priority, availability of third party funding and local factors e.g. nearby hospital.

All of the available Access for All funding has now been allocated to projects until Spring 2019. However, we intend to seek further funding for the programme thereafter and should this be successful we will commission new nominations for projects from the industry. For Raynes Park to be considered, it would need strong support from the train operating company. Furthermore, a proportion of third party funding would help to weight the station’s prioritisation.