OXFORD’s two main bus companies have been congratulated for converting all their city buses into easy access vehicles – seven years ahead of the Government’s deadline.

This week Oxford Bus Company got two new buses from a sister company, meaning all 106 of its city buses now have low floors.

Stagecoach said all its city services had low floors by 2004, but in the past year it had brought in 48 low floor vehicles for long distance services such as the Oxford Tube.

The Government’s deadline for the introduction of low floor vehicles under the Disability Discrimination Act is 2016 for single deckers, 2017 for double deckers and 2020 for coaches.

Gwyn Huish, chairman of the Oxfordshire elderly and disabled passengers pressure group Transport For All, said: “This is an excellent thing.

“For someone with severe mobility problems a step on the bus is pretty much like Mount Everest for you or me and a low floor bus is the difference between being able to go out and not going out.

“We really welcome the efforts that Oxford Bus Company have made.

“We only wish every single bus was low floor so disabled and elderly people could get on them properly.”

Garrett Fleming, 42, from Elton Close, near Sandhills, uses the Oxford Bus Company service from Thornhill Park and Ride to the city centre about three times a week with his 18-month-old son Ben and daughter Eloise, six.

He said: “I think it’s great having low floor buses. With two kids it can be very difficult getting a pram on and off, this makes life much easier.”

Oxford Bus Company also has 18 wheelchair accessible airline coaches running to Heathrow and Gatwick and now has just 19 Express coaches to London which need to be converted.

Stagecoach has 42 double decker and 98 single decker buses in the city which have low floors, while its 26 Oxford Tube double deckers are also wheelchair accessible.

Operations director for Oxford Bus Company Louisa Weeks said: “It's been a much cherished ambition of ours to achieve a 100 per cent low floor fleet.

“Our dramatic investment in new, green, environmentally friendly buses in the last few years has enabled us to get very close to our target.”

Stagecoach managing director Martin Sutton said: “We have been working towards this goal for some time, investing in large numbers of new state of the art buses.

“It’s important that we make bus travel as easy for people to use as possible and this makes a big difference, particularly for those that require wheelchair access.”