Bus protesters call on South Yorkshire councils to back plan for return to public ownership

Better Buses for South Yorkshire called a protest rally outside the first South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority meeting of the year in Sheffield city centre today, Monday January 16.

They want South Yorkshire council leaders to back the mayor’s plans to introduce franchising, which would give more control to local authorities to deliver bus services, which saw big cuts last October.

More than 45 services were axed and fares went up before the mayor stepped in to fund maximum bus and tram fares of £2 throughout the South Yorkshire region from November to help people cope with the cost-of-living crisis.

The campaign has warned that the end of government post-pandemic funding for bus operators this spring will mean thateven more service cuts are on the way.

Retired bus driver Martin Mayer, secretary of Sheffield Trades Council, chaired the rally. He called for a return to franchising, followed by a return to full public control of buses to recreate Sheffield’s ‘world-class’ system of the 1980s.

‘Bus-code lottery’

Mr Mayer also urged Mayor Coppard to consider taking over a bus company and running it as a bus operator of last resort, which the mayor looked at when Powell’s closed last year. He has powers to step in when services are threatened.

Jenny Patient of Yorkshire and Humberside TUC said there needs to be a vision for creating an affordable, reliable bus service.

Sheffield Labour councillor Minesh Parekh told the protesters that there’s a ‘bus-code lottery’: “There are some areas of the city well served and others where you could go three days without seeing one.

“The ward I represent, Crookes and Crosspool, exemplifies this tension. Crookes is well served by the 52 – although it has gotten less good in recent years (and isn’t that just a motto for our times).

“Whereas Crosspool’s 51, it’s a miracle if it arrives when it’s scheduled to."The 52 runs regularly because the bus operators see it as a profitable route – both Stagecoach and First operate on it and divert buses from other parts of the city to scoop up every extra penny they can.”

He called for a”genuinely public public transport network”.

‘Holding things up’

Other speakers included the Green Party’s Sheffield City Council candidate for Fulwood ward, Dylan Lewis-Creser.

Matthew Topham from Better Buses for South Yorkshire said: “We’re finally making serious progress on delivering public control. We’ve finally got a mayor who’s made it a priority to work on that.

“What the mayor needs is the support of local council leaders, who have fed people misinformation about public control. They need to stop faffing about and holding things up and deliver the public control we need.

“By this time next year we should be seeing the mayor make a final decision to get public control – there are government hoops to jump through. Then it’s a case of just enacting it.”

He said that campaigners have been working in Barnsley and Doncaster to add more names to the campaign’s petition on the issue. For more information, go to www.megaphone.org.uk/p/BetterBusesSY

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