South Yorkshire one step closer to bus franchising ‘so everybody can have a better bus service’
Leaders have decided to conduct a 12-week public consultation on bus franchising in South Yorkshire “so everybody can have a better bus service”.
At a board meeting at South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA), regional leaders have decided to go forward with the process around bus franchising and the next step will be a 12-week public consultation starting this month.
As the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) reported last week, a bus reform assessment concluded that bus franchising delivers the best value for money and affordability for South Yorkshire – and on March 12, 2024, having received the bus reform assessment, SYMCA approved the progression of the bus reform assessment to independent audit (review).
This review found no issues with what the mayoral combined authority has reported during the process and it can decide if it wants to go ahead with the proposed franchising scheme.
Oliver Coppard, the South Yorkshire mayor, said “today is a really big day” on the journey to better public transport in the county.
Mr Coppard announced that they were going to conduct a 12-week public consultation about the process to find out what people think about bus franchising, what is working or not working and how people want the bus service to run.
He added the decline started in the 1980s and in the two-plus years he has been the mayor he accelerated the bus franchising assessment process to find a solution to fix public transport in South Yorkshire.
After the announcement, Mr Coppard told the LDRS that the region is a step closer to bus franchising.
He said: “We’re going through the process of bus franchising, it’s a legal process and it’s controlled by the government but we’re going through that process quicker than anyone else in the country.”
The next step, therefore, is to hear from the communities in South Yorkshire – it is well-reported what people think of the service: it just doesn’t work.
Mr Coppard said he gets a lot of letters and has heard a lot of individual stories and opinions on the matter but this process “it’s the people’s opportunity to have a formal say how they think buses should work or, indeed, what they think it’s not working”.
So what would change if bus franchising were to go ahead in South Yorkshire? Would this mean cheaper fares, more reliable buses, and better services?
Mr Coppard told the LDRS that at the moment bus companies such as Stagecoach and First make the decisions.
He said: “All I’m left to do is, essentially, give them public money, taxpayer’s money, when they don’t want to run bus services and ask them to do it on our behalf.
“This (bus franchising) reverses that process. If we go through this process, I will be able to publicly control that network so we can decide what the fares look like, we can decide what the timetables look like and we can decide what the routes look like.”
Mr Coppard added they could use the money from the profitable, effective routes and put them into the less profitable routes “so everybody can have a better bus service”.
The 12-week consultation period would launch on October 23, 2024, and close on January 15, 2025.
Following today’s decision, Matthew Topham, a campaigner at Better Buses for South Yorkshire, told the LDRS: “For the next 100 days, people in South Yorkshire have the biggest opportunity in four decades to fix our broken bus network.
“Nowhere else in Europe has handed so much control over local buses to private companies. The Mayor’s plans would start to fix that, putting power back in your pocket — but only if enough people vote in favour!
“London-style hopper fares and Oyster cards, timetables that link up with the train and tram, new routes, and real punishment for bus companies that don’t turn up on time. It’s all ours if enough of us vote yes! Please get in touch with us or sign our petition to help deliver a massive mandate.
“The mayor’s plans can go further — this Labour government is lifting the ban on council owners operators. The mayor could save millions by running services directly under the new public control system.
“We’ll be calling for the public to control and run services in our interests, without a private firm enough into run the new contracts for their own profit.”