On Wednesday the Daily Mail carried a worrying story about the treatment of a pregnant woman on a train from Bromley South to Victoria. Unable to find a seat in standard class, she had sat in a vacant first class seat. Although she was nearly six months pregnant and wearing a “Baby On Board” badge, reportedly the conductor told her that she could not do so, and she was made to stand until someone in standard class gave up their own seat. Unsurprisingly her complaint to Southeastern had gone unanswered.

In their rebuttal to the Daily Mail, Southeastern highlighted three kinds of help they offer pregnant commuters: Baby On Board badges, Priority Cards, and “Letters of Authorisation”.

We’ve been looking into this.

Baby On Board Southeastern introduced their Baby On Board badge in May 2015. (Like other innovations, they were 10 years behind TfL who introduced theirs in 2005.) They are available on a simple request to the customer service centre at any stage in pregnancy: details are online here.

Priority Card Southeastern also introduced their Priority Seats and Priority Seating Cards in July 2015. The idea is that someone can show a Priority Card to ask someone already sitting in a designated Priority Seat to move. But they do not guarantee a seat, and someone with a standard-class ticket and a Priority Card cannot use a Priority Seat in First Class. Priority Cards are available at any stage in pregnancy, but a paper application form must be submitted accompanied with proof of address and a MATB1 or written confirmation of pregnancy (which must be from a doctor).  Successful applicants can also get a Baby on Board badge. Details are here. (The downloadable form says that it should be sent to an address in Tonbridge, but this might be out of date since new contractors in the Midlands took over Southeastern’s customer service work.)

Letter of Authorisation Southeastern also have something called a “Letter of Authorisation”. Details are very hard to find on their website: the Southeastern Twitter team could not tell us where they were, and we eventually found them in a drop-down box “Can pregnant passengers get a seat?” buried in 9th place in an unstructured set of Frequently Asked Questions about Trains and Train Services (below dogs in 7th place – make of that what you will) (archived page). Possession of this letter allows pregnant women to sit in First Class when there are no seats in Standard (that’s any First Class seat, not just the Priority ones). But the terms are complex:

• you cannot apply until you are 20 weeks or more pregnant
• you need to travel at leave twice a week, and have proof of that (until mid-2015 you had to have a monthly or longer season ticket, but it seems that restriction has been lifted).
• if you don’t have a MATB1 you may need a different letter from your doctor than for a Priority Card – although in this case the letter can come a midwife instead.
• there is no application form, but you need to apply through the normal customer service centre – so be prepared for delays.

Someone in the circumstances described in the Daily Mail article would have needed one of these Letters of Authorisation to use First Class.

We asked Southeastern how many of these Letters of Authorisation they issue, and they told us 91 a year. That’s seems to us a very low number: even after allowing for the fact that Metro services do not have First Class seating so there would be little point in most London residents applying (Bromley South is an exception), we reckon that there are well in excess of 1,000 pregnant travellers on Mainline services every year – so less than 10% have taken advantage of this useful scheme. Why? We think that it’s because there’s little publicity, that it is so hard to find the details, that the application process is different from the Priority Card and from the Baby On Board badge, that there are petty restrictions, and that people cannot apply online.

So we’re urging Southeastern to:

• give greater publicity to these generally sensible provisions.
• have a single, well-signposted, web page with all the information pregnant women need – and similar leaflets as well.
• have a single, online, application process for all three offers together (including a post-dated Letter of Authorisation).
• ensure that the same documentation is acceptable for the Letter of Authorisation and for the Priority Card applications – and that the explanatory text makes that clear.
• abolish the requirement of twice a week travel for the Letter of Authorisation – this seems petty as someone travelling once a week would make correspondingly less use of First Class accommodation, and it makes the application process more difficult.
• instruct conductors to treat obviously pregnant women without the necessary paperwork as though they did have it.

We would be very interested in any feedback on this: how easy has it been to get a Priority Card or a Letter of Authorisation? How long did it take? What other provisions should Southeastern make?