South Yorkshire’s mayor could buy bus depots and fleet if bus franchising chosen

Following an assessment, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) has been recommended to buy the depots and the fleet if it goes ahead with bus franchising in South Yorkshire.

At today’s (March 12) board meeting, members were told that the franchising assessment had been completed which was the “first stage” set out in the legislation in terms of bus reform.

The MCA was in favour of franchising as – as it was stated in a report published ahead of the meeting – over the past decade, bus mileage declined by 42 per cent.

In 2012/13, 13 per cent of the bus network mileage was supported by public funding, by 2022/23 this had grown to 20 per cent and during the current financial year the forecast is that the proportion of publicly supported buses will increase further to 24 per cent.

The assessment has concluded that the preferred option for the MCA would be to buy the depots and the fleet.

“This would require some upfront investment,” members heard.

The next step would be to conduct an independent audit of this franchising assessment.

This would take a few months – between eight and twelve weeks – to complete the audit and then the MCA board would make a decision on whether to continue with the process (and continue into public consultation).

Oliver Coppard hailed it as “a big and important moment”.

However, this confirms that the MCA cannot have a vote before the local elections in May.

Better Buses for South Yorkshire, a campaign group whose members met Mr Coppard ahead of the meeting where he ticked off progress on a map, has recently submitted an open letter with almost 1,100 signatures calling on him to speed up the process before the local elections in May.

At the meeting, Fran Postlethwaite, from the campaign group, reiterated that some people were concerned about the timeline of the events and urged Mr Coppard to make a decision before the pre-election period.

Mr Coppard told her that the MCA has “to get the audit absolutely right” before it can make the next steps.

After the meeting, Matthew Topham, from Better Buses for South Yorkshire, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Our campaigners fought to make transforming the bus network, so it works for passengers not profit, a key issue in the last mayoral election.

“Today they asked the mayor to mark off his first major milestone to deliver the public control that we need and is the norm across every European country.

“Today’s stunt shows that progress happens when campaigners make politicians accountable for the things they matter to us, not least proper public services.”