Should a wheelchair user who wants to travel by bus have priority over a child in a pushchair? That, broadly speaking, is the question that will now come before Britain’s most senior judges.

In granting Doug Paulley permission to appeal this week, the UK supreme court has raised the possibility that buggies will no longer be allowed to block wheelchairs on buses.

Paulley, 36, relies on a wheelchair to get about. In February 2012 he tried to board a bus from Wetherby to Leeds, only to find that the only available space was occupied by a woman with a sleeping child in a pushchair. The driver asked her to fold down the chair and move. She refused, insisting that her pushchair would not fold.

Paulley offered to fold down his own wheelchair and sit in an ordinary seat. But the driver said it would not be possible to secure his chair safely on the winding roads of West Yorkshire.

Paulley waited for the next bus, missed his train at Leeds, and arrived at his destination an hour late. With the support of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, he sued the bus operator for unlawful discrimination, and was awarded compensation of £5,500.

Doug Paulley from Wetherby, Yorkshire, won compensation from First Group - the company then successfully appealed. Photograph: Andrew McCaren/Ross Parry

Last December the bus company, First Group, persuaded three appeal judges, headed by Lady Justice Arden, to overturn that decision. So the question for the supreme court will be whether Paul Isaacs, the part-time judge at Leeds who found in Paulley’s favour, got it right first time. The supreme court judges would not have granted Paulley permission to appeal unless there was at least a chance that they would find in his favour.

In the court of appeal, Lord Justice Lewison said the case was not about whether other passengers should make room for a wheelchair user: of course they should, if possible. Nor was it about whether parents in the wheelchair space with a child in a folding buggy should fold their buggies in order to make way for a wheelchair user: of course they should, if possible.

Non-wheelchair users, unlike wheelchair users, normally had a choice about which part of the bus to sit or stand in. Common decency and respect for wheelchair users should mean that other passengers make way for them.

What was at issue, he said, was whether the bus company must have a policy to compel all other passengers to vacate the wheelchair space irrespective of the reason why they are in it, on pain of being made to leave the bus if they do not, leaving no discretion to the driver.

That, said the judge, was “a step too far”. Parliament had not intended the rights of wheelchair uses to trump all other considerations.

Arden agreed that a bus company must take all reasonable steps, short of compelling passengers to move from the wheelchair space. Requiring them to move – or leave the bus if it was full – would require legislation.

Lord Justice Underhill considered whether the bus company should have required other passengers to give priority to wheelchair users. Such a policy could not be enforced by the driver, Underhill said. “The fact that some passengers will, albeit rarely, act selfishly and irresponsibly is a sufficient reason for imposing on bus companies a legal responsibility for a situation which is not of their making and which they are not in a position to prevent.”

Really? Manhandling uncooperative passengers is certainly no part of a bus driver’s duties. But we are all familiar with the driver who refuses to move until an antisocial individual gets off. Support from other passengers can be surprisingly effective.

The law requires bus companies to make reasonable adjustments for wheelchair users. But is it reasonable to give people in wheelchairs priority over people pushing buggies?

That was what parliament had intended, said Isaacs, the part-time judge at Leeds. No it was not, said Lewison in the court of appeal. “What is a reasonable adjustment depends, among other things, on the impact of the adjustment on others.”

What would be reasonable in these circumstances? Public buses are required to have space for at least one wheelchair. They are not required to have floor space for buggies, shopping trollies or wheeled suitcases — still less for lots of people to stand opposite the exit doors. Removing a sleeping child from a buggy may be inconvenient, but it is not likely to be as inconvenient for a parent as it would be for a wheelchair user to be prevented from boarding. People in wheelchairs should surely have priority in the spaces provided for them.

There are limits, of course: there might be another wheelchair user on board already, or just too many passengers. We do not require people to get off a bus early just because others want to get on. But it should not be possible for disability legislation to be circumvented so easily.

Lewison’s “common decency and respect for wheelchair users” should be more than merely an aspiration: the supreme court should find a way of making it enforceable.