NEW figures show there are fewer wheelchair-accessible taxis and private hire vehicles available in Winchester than before the pandemic.

Department for Transport (DfT) figures show Winchester had 244 licensed vehicles as of April, but only 43 could be used by people with mobility difficulties - a decline from March 2020, when there were 78.

Taxi operators blame a change in the law that has favoured cleaner engines.

Most local authorities require all or part of their taxi fleet to be wheelchair-accessible, but only five per cent of them have made it compulsory for private hire vehicles. Winchester has a policy only for taxis.

READ MORE: Pre-booked taxis take over railway station spots following controversial SWR deal

Meanwhile, there are 154 minicabs in Winchester, but only one (1 per cent) can offer a ride to a wheelchair user.

A DfT spokesperson said: “While it's down to local authorities to manage wheelchair-accessible vehicles in their fleet, the Government is backing passengers with disability awareness training for drivers and bolstered laws, including fines, for those who fail to provide reasonable assistance.”

Ben Morris, 22, who previously attended the University of Winchester, said he was shocked to hear the figures.

Mr Morris, who was born with spinal muscular atrophy and uses an electric wheelchair, told the Chronicle: “I think whoever is managing the taxi service obviously hasn’t thought about people like myself. I feel that, if they have decided to reduce the number for cost, then in my mind that would be considered almost discriminatory. People in wheelchairs should have every opportunity to travel as much as an able-bodied person. They’ve literally split the opportunity in half and ‘Good luck’. How can that be right in anyone’s head?

“I would like to see the reasoning behind this because it’s not right at all.

SEE ALSO: New tiger conservation project in Bhutan backed by Marwell Wildlife

“It is difficult anyway to find taxis that are wheelchair accessible. You can’t sit on a street corner and wave down an accessible taxi, you have to plan in advance, so if those plans have been restricted further it will lead to increased isolation, it might stop disabled people stop thinking about wanting to go out in the first place.”

A spokesperson for Wintax, Winchester’s largest taxi company, said that the drop in wheelchair-accessible vehicles has come around due to new legislation, saying: “What’s happened is they’ve brought in a law where any car from before 2016 which doesn’t have a Euro 6 engine cannot be used as a taxi.

“They’ve changed it and what has happened is a lot of these drivers and Hackney drivers that used to have wheelchair accessible taxies, those cars were all 2013, 2014, 2015 and they didn’t have Euro 6 engines in there, so a lot of these cars were expiring in 2021, 2022.”

Winchester City Council has been contacted for comment.