As part of their Get On Board campaign, Scottish Accessibility charity Leonard Cheshire has warned that a target to make Britain’s railway stations fully accessible by 2030 is set to be missed by 40 years.

The Government published an inclusive strategy with a commitment to make services “fully accessible for all passengers by 2030”, but this is looking to be closer to the year 2070 based on Leonard Cheshire’s research. They found that of the 2,579 stations in Britain, around 980 of those are not-step free, leaving them inaccessible to those with disabilities.

What’s more, their research found that upgrades for step-free access are only being completed at about 19 stations per year, meaning that at the current rate the network won’t be fully accessible until about 51 years from now, in 2071.

To put that 2071 figure into context, NASA is aiming to land humans on Mars by 2035 and SpaceX plans to have built a rudimentary city on the red planet by the year 2050. This means that in the year 2070 there will be people from Earth living their lives on Mars, and at the same time, the Government will not have finished removing the steps at the train stations. It’s just not good enough!

Read more at Leonard Cheshire’s website