SOUTH YORKSHIRE MAYOR STEPS IN TO KEEP SCHOOL BUSES GOING

Published 19 July 2022 at 9:02am

• South Yorkshire’s Mayor proposes funding to protect at-risk school buses.
• South Yorkshire is at risk of losing of a third of its bus network in the autumn.
• Commercially-run school bus services are among the routes at risk.

South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard is stepping in to protect school buses at risk from brutal cuts to the bus network.

The region is facing the loss of a third of its bus network, after government funding to help operators get through the pandemic comes to an end in October. Commercially-operated school bus routes are among those at risk.

At a forthcoming board meeting of the Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA), the Mayor will propose using part of the MCA’s budget to keep those school buses going.

South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard said, ‘We are facing the immediate threat of the biggest and most damaging cuts for a generation, and sadly school buses are among those at risk of being pulled.

‘South Yorkshire’s roads are already among the most dangerous in the UK for children. So unless we want even more cars on the school run - not only increasing traffic and making our air more toxic, but also potentially making it harder for many parents and carers to get to work - a reliable school bus service is vital.

‘While we wait for the money and the powers to fix our broken bus system, I’ve promised to do everything I can to keep our service going.

‘So I’m recommending that local leaders approve our plan of using part of our budget reserve to keep these buses going in the face of brutal cuts.’

School buses which carry children who get a zero fare bus pass from their local authority are not affected by the cuts, as these routes are already funded by SYMCA. The routes under threat are the ones which also carry children paying 80p fares.

The Mayor is proposing that up to £5.1m is used to protect these services over the next two years. Local leaders will have the chance to approve the funding at the MCA board meeting on July 25th.

SYMCA lost out in the most recent round of government bus funding. Mayor Oliver Coppard has called on the government to provide emergency funding to keep the service going while SYMCA is in the process of seeing if it can take buses back into public control through the franchising process.

Most buses in South Yorkshire are run by private companies. Under the current system these companies are free to decide where and when they will run services. When bus companies withdraw services – as they are expected to do in October when government funding stops – SYMCA can pay other companies to run the route. However, in the most recent tender process, a number of routes received no bids from operators.