Pregnant commuter's fury at being forced to sit on carriage floor instead of in first class

 
Sat on the floor: commuter Victoria Poskitt Picture: Alex Lentati
ictoria Poskitt is 5 months pregnant Picture: Alex Lentati
21 February 2014

A pregnant commuter has hit out at train bosses for their seating policy after she was forced to sit on a carriage floor when she nearly collapsed.

Victoria Poskitt, who is just over five months’ pregnant with her first child, has asked for a special pass to sit in first class but does not qualify.

She sought the pass following a recent ordeal when she began to feel unwell on a packed South West Trains service from Surbiton to Waterloo.

When she informed fellow passengers, in the hope of being offered a seat, she was ignored and had to sink onto the floor for the rest of the journey.

Fury: Victoria Poskitt is 5 months pregnant Picture: Alex Lentati
SW Trains commuter Victoria Poskitt who is 5 months pregnant is upset that fellow passengers didn't give up their space for her, even after feeling ill on a train and SWT refused to let her go into 1st class to sit-down

Mrs Poskitt, 40, who commutes from Surbiton for her job in marketing, said SWT were unsympathetic when she asked for the pass, which allows pregnant women to sit in first class if there are no seats.

The company’s policy is two-fold: that the woman has to be no more than 20 weeks from her due date and that she travels with a weekly, monthly or annual season ticket.

Mrs Poskitt travels from Surbiton to London three days a week, working the other two days from her home in Yorkshire. She said: “You have to have a pass [to sit in first class], and because I travel three days a week, not five, I don’t have a pass, I pay by Oyster... I thought they might be willing to make an exception, particularly after I told them about what happened, but after conversations with various managers they’ve flatly said ‘no’, saying policy is policy.

“I don’t honestly know [what to do next], I keep trying with South West Trains, I’m throwing myself at their mercy because they could make all the difference to the last few months of my pregnancy.

“They said to me that if I’m feeling unwell I should find a guard; if they’ve been on one of their trains they should know that’s impossible. Then they said if you’re feeling unwell you should pull the emergency cord. Really?” She also said that even if the other passengers had not realised she was pregnant “simple human decency should have prevailed”.

A spokeswoman for the South West Trains-Network Rail Alliance said: “We are sorry to hear that Ms Poskitt felt unwell on one of our services. We have the most extensive upgrade scheme of any rail operator to help our customers who are expecting a baby.” She added that for pregnant women without season tickets, there were priority seats like those on the Tube.

“As on other forms of transport, our experience is that fellow passengers will often give up their seat for mums-to-be and other customers such as elderly people and we are sorry this did not happen,” the spokeswoman said.

London TravelWatch said operators should “show a bit of discretion” for pregnant women and people with mobility issues on crowded services.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in