Bus driver leaves mum and disabled son at stop after refusing to lower ramp

London bus drivers have been accused of refusing to lower an access ramp for her disabled boy, 2.

Footage shows Charles’ mum pleading to a driver to lower the ramp for her son, only for him to insist she ‘bump it up’.

The video shows the bus driving off. ‘What an idiot,’ the single mum says to herself.

The anonymous mum recorded an encounter with the driver last Wednesday morning on the 197 in Croydon.

She pressed the button to ask the driver to lower the ramp for her son, Charles, who was in a specialist chair, at 10.45am.

But the driver called the mum over, insisted the chair was ‘just a buggy’, and asked her to ‘bump it up’ before driving off.

‘It’s awful and feels so humiliating when this happens, when I got to the soft play I was crying,’ the mum said.

‘Buses are Charles’ absolute obsession, and once this has happened, I just want to go home but I can’t, I have to keep going for him.

‘It’s really upsetting to be left standing at the bus stop watching the bus driving off.’

Charles has a chronic lung disease, requiring a ventilator for at least 16 hours a day.

He weighed only 2lbs when he was born in 2022. The youngster is fed via a tube and cannot speak or walk.

Charles’ mum stores her son’s ventilator, oxygen cylinder, suction machine and feeding pump below the seat. His mum refuses to bump up the chair in case the equipment is damaged.

In a second video filmed on their way home from a soft play session at 12.15pm, a different driver came off the bus to help carry the seat.

The mum, however, said ‘no’, stressing it’s not a pram. A supervisor asked the driver to lower the ramp to let the woman on board.

The mum said: ‘They just don’t care, all they have to do is press a button. Someone who doesn’t need the ramp isn’t going to ask for it.

‘People shouldn’t be expected to explain their disabilities or justify their needs.’

Nearly three in 10 disabled people in the UK have experienced issues with ramps on buses, according to campaign group Transport for All.

The ramps can become jammed, or the driver lowers it incorrectly, such as not ‘kneeling’ the bus low enough.

‘Charles has to fight for every day of his life: once I manage to get us out the door, I just need for things to go smoothly, that’s not too much to ask,’ the mum said.

‘All I want to do is get on the bus and have a bit of peace, not arguments.

‘By the time we’ve had the discussion, they could easily have just put down the ramp, it makes no sense.’

Transport for London (TfL) has apologised, calling such refusals ‘unacceptable’ and confirmed it is investigating.

All bus routes in the capital are served by low-floor vehicles, with a space for one wheelchair user and a ramp.

Rosie Trew, head of bus service delivery at the transit authority, said: ‘Wheelchair users and others requiring use of the ramp have every right to expect to be able to use the ramp on every journey.

‘Any unreasonable refusal to deploy the on-bus ramp is completely unacceptable and we are very sorry for the distress this has caused.

‘We are working with the bus operator to fully investigate the incidents and continue to urge anyone who experiences issues like these to report them immediately.’

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