Vital South Yorkshire bus plan aims to avoid more cuts to “atrocious” service

By Julia Armstrong, Local Democracy Reporter
Published 4th Jun 2024, 16:34 BST
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com 
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Visit Shots! now
A bus service improvement plan for South Yorkshire is aimed at securing £7.82m of funding – without which services described as “atrocious” would have to be cut again.

The plan has to be submitted to the government Department for Transport by June 12, a meeting of South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority in Sheffield heard today (June 4). That will lead to the release of £7.82m revenue funding for 2024/25 that will mainly be used to fund South Yorkshire bus services.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A report to the meeting said: “Without this funding tendered services may have to be withdrawn, depriving communities of public transport options mostly on evenings and weekends, increasing transport-related social exclusion.”

It updates a plan submitted in 2021.

Better Buses for South Yorkshire campaigners and South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard, ahead of an SYMCA meeting earlier this year that discussed progress on increasing public control of bus services. Picture: Better Buses for South YorkshireBetter Buses for South Yorkshire campaigners and South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard, ahead of an SYMCA meeting earlier this year that discussed progress on increasing public control of bus services. Picture: Better Buses for South Yorkshire
Better Buses for South Yorkshire campaigners and South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard, ahead of an SYMCA meeting earlier this year that discussed progress on increasing public control of bus services. Picture: Better Buses for South Yorkshire

Get a bespoke headline round-up, as well as breaking updates, when you sign up to The Star’s free emails

Mayor Oliver Coppard said: “This is a process which we have been forced to take at no small pace and we are being asked to do in what feels like in quite a rush when this government haven’t given us the time and space which I think we needed to actually develop those plans in a sensible way.”

Viable

He said he was pleased to see how far the plan had come in such a short space of time. The mayoral authority has worked with organisations including the four South Yorkshire local authorities and bus user groups to put the plan together.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The government calls for a ‘minimum viable product’ level of information from the authority but the plan submitted will be wider than that, to argue for “transformational growth” of the service.

Doncaster mayor Coun Ros Jones said: “The bus services in South Yorkshire are far less than best. More importantly, as representative of Doncaster, they’re atrocious and I’m hearing it day in, day out still – we’re doing all we can.

“This is down to government not giving us the funding we require in order to deliver for the people and actually keep people in work, getting our buses to the right place at the right time, and therefore I would hope we’d have a substantial increase on what we’ve got because, other than that, they’re actually driving bus usage down, not up.

“It doesn’t go to zero carbon emissions, does it?”

Related topics:South YorkshireDepartment for TransportRos JonesSheffieldDoncaster