MAYOR OLIVER COPPARD 100 DAYS SPEECH
16th August 2022
Today marks 100 days since I took office as South Yorkshire’s Mayor. You may not have noticed, but there have been a couple of challenges that have been thrown our way; the airport, buses, drought, wildfires… So I apologise in advance for the plague of locusts heading our way.
To be the Mayor of the place I call home is the greatest honour of my life.
In 100 days, my team at the Combined Authority, working in close collaboration with leaders in Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham and Sheffield, have already shown the impact we can have when we come together. As I promised In my manifesto, we have:
Moved at pace to accelerate the assessment into bus franchising, extended the Zoom Beyond pass, begun the recruitment of a new active travel commissioner, tackled the government on bus and train cuts, hosted my first Mayor’s Question Time, spoken to hundreds of community groups, commissioned a plan to address health inequalities, and started work on the delivery of our South Yorkshire climate assembly.
But I didn’t want to come here today to simply reel off policies and achievements.
Today I also want to talk about the tragedy of levelling-up, my ambitions for South Yorkshire, and why I’m more optimistic about the future than I was on Day 1.
Those of us who know South Yorkshire know the change we need goes far beyond what anyone could accomplish in 100 days.
What we need runs much deeper. For at least forty years South Yorkshire has been battered and bruised, our confidence chipped away, by the unavoidable forces of progress and change, by decisions taken 200 miles away in London, and the self-inflicted blows of a region all too often devoid of a strategy or plan, or the funding needed to deliver system wide change.
That situation is neither inevitable nor insurmountable. South Yorkshire has made its mark before; we powered the industrial revolution and created materials that changed the world. No ambition should be beyond us.
But if we are going to restore and renew that confidence we once had, the certainty of purpose that once secured and strengthened our communities, then we need to do two things as a priority.
Firstly, we need to create a shared vision for the future of South Yorkshire; for the type of region we want South Yorkshire to be, not just for those of us here now, but for those generations to come, hoping to build their lives and careers here. We need more than a plan, we need a narrative and identity that defines us in the globally competitive marketplace for investment, people and ideas, and offers a proud interpretation of our past and a confident vision of our future.
Secondly, I want to use the powers and resources at my disposal, working with our councils and our communities, with leaders that have both been elected and self-appointed, to build an enabling state; a platform that we not only build together, but upon which we collectively stand to access and confront tomorrow; better public transport, skills, and business investment must be part of those foundations.
My job should not be to try to desperately stitch together a safety net that catches us when we fall, but to create a solid foundation on which the new South Yorkshire can be built; and upon which everybody can stand, equally able to access both opportunity and support.
Those ambitions will not be easy.
But despite the many challenges I know are facing us as a community, I am more optimistic today than I was on May 9th, because I know now there are no shortage of people determined and able to help me build that better, brighter future for South Yorkshire; to work with me to build that platform and that vision.
Over the last 100 days I have been lucky enough to see first-hand the pride and passion of those people in our region committed to living their life by the motto of South Yorkshire – each shall strive for the welfare of all - their absolute determination to protect and serve our communities.
Julie Kenny – who has taken on the frankly outrageous task of restoring Wentworth Woodhouse, once the largest private house in the UK.
Chris Hardy, who manages the S6 foodbank, which has gone from the back room of a church to a warehouse in just a few years, working tirelessly to serve hundreds of families across our community every week.
The founders of Rivelin Robotics, creating world leading technology from an office in Kelham Island
Mark Chadwick, who responded to the news about Peel Group looking at the future viability of our airport by bringing thousands of people together online in just a few days, to share, news, information, and build a campaign to fight for DSA’s future.
The whole team at Baby Basics, a charity started in Sheffield, stepping in to make sure babies born across South Yorkshire have access to the fundamental support they need at the beginning of their lives.
And Dave Richards from WanDisco – creating the next generation of programmers and wealth creators here in South Yorkshire.
Over the last hundred days I have been inspired by the dignity and passion of their service to our community, their refusal to accept the status-quo, and their pursuit of a future that is greater than either our present or our recent past; their reach forever exceeding our grasp. Because there is no shortage of expectation, and no limit to people’s courage or resolve.
Thanks to the example set by the leaders in our communities, I know now, if I did not know it on May 9th, that while the powers formally available to the Mayor of South Yorkshire may be limited, both the responsibilities and opportunities of my office are not.
Over the last three months I have been asked to intervene and engage in everything from grouse shooting to the obesity crisis.
In no small part, that is because metro Mayors like me are a new feature in the political landscape of the UK, and we are still reshaping and distorting the political structures around us.
Not just formally through the pathfinder process being led by my colleagues Andy Burnham and Andy Street, or through direct, formal and structured engagement with national and local government, but through the sharp elbowed and relentless day-to-day process of politics.
I know now I am not only responsible for exercising those powers explicitly detailed within our devolution deal, but for responding to the hopes, fears, aspirations and daily frustrations of 1.4 million people who live here; many of whom are struggling to get by, for whom life is too hard and too short, for whom the months are too long for wages that are too small.
Those people unable to properly feed their children, worried about the future, scared to look at their gas bill, do not stop to ask what the legislation might say about who is responsible, or who can help them, and nor should they.
They demand and deserve political leadership. And when the government in London are so negligent, so absent, local leadership becomes even more necessary, and comes even more sharply into focus.
Here in South Yorkshire we are exploring every opportunity to intervene more forcefully in the privatised bus market, to challenge decades of health inequalities and open up new routes to finance for our brightest and best businesses. We are bringing in expertise to help us create a modal shift in how people get across our region, and looking at every option to bring together the voluntary and public sectors to address the cost of living crisis.
In stark contrast to our current government, across a wide range of issues facing the communities of South Yorkshire, I may not have formal authority but I have no shortage of enthusiasm for a greater level of responsibility.
In case anyone is getting worried, this is not a call for independence. But proper devolution should be a partnership, whereas too often it’s a rigged game of poker.
Levelling-up simply cannot work if it’s a high stakes game in which we are isolated, our community pitted against other regions and the government, each unsure of the others needs, motives or intentions.
On day one in the job, I wrote to the Prime Minister, offering to work in partnership on some of the big challenges facing our region; not least working together to improve our public transport system.
When I came into office there were just 400 weeks left before 2030, the date by which this government have said they intend to have delivered a London style transport system outside of the capital; a key part of their agenda to deliver so called levelling-up.
And yet today, 16 weeks later, I haven’t even received the courtesy of a response from Boris Johnson, while our public transport system - governed by legislation set in London – continues to collapse under the contradictions of a privatised public service.
Rather than a sensible, grown-up conversation about the needs of our community, we are forced into competing with other, equally deserving parts of our country for pots of money that are too small to begin with. You can’t level-up through competition.
The contrast between the government’s levelling-up rhetoric and the reality across our communities is stark. I worry that the government seem intent on doing little more than gaslighting those of us who live in the north.
Since becoming Mayor I have sought conversations with government on our trains, our buses, and on support for delivering investment deals that would offer us the chance to radically change our future. But with scant and notable exceptions, I am yet to find a willing partner in government.
On recent evidence the chances of us finding the next Prime Minister to be a more engaged or ambitious partner appear slim. Between them, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss seem devoid of any ambition for communities like ours; they offer us little hope and fewer ideas for making life better here in South Yorkshire, or addressing the urgent needs of what Rishi has disparagingly called our ‘deprived, urban’ communities.
But that is the real tragedy of levelling-up. To speak directly to Liz Truss - no one in South Yorkshire simply wants a hand-out from government. While we need someone who understands and responds to the challenges of our region, we want nothing less than the chance to stand on our own two feet – to play a full and equal part in the future of a country that offers opportunity to all of our communities.
When I speak to you next May, after not 100 days but one year, our region and our country will be in a very different place. We will have a new prime minister. The economic headwinds we are now facing may have been a temporary storm or the start of a fundamental change in the weather.
Levelling-up may prove to be a renewed political ambition, or driven further down the agenda by a government unwilling or unable to challenge its own political impulses.
Those things will matter. We are more exposed than most to the downsides of the UK’s current economic model, and the success of our region relies more than I would like on choices made in London.
But what will also matter will be our ability to work together as a region, to be brave and to make hard choices; our willingness to listen to our communities and to respond to their needs with all the tools and resources at our disposal. Our capacity to have bigger and better ideas, to innovate and to invest in the long-term interests of our region.
I was in New York a few weeks ago, as part of the City Leadership Initiative run by Harvard University and philanthropist and former Presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg. One of the people brought in to talk to us was Barack Obama’s former community organiser, Marshall Ganz.
He’s now a Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, but he learned his trade as an activist during the civil rights struggle of the 60s, in the Deep South of the United States.
After his talk I asked him about the state of the world at the moment, and what lessons there were to learn from his experience about how we face the future. He said to me ‘You have to hope. And turn that hope into action. What other choice is there?’
After 100 days I know this job is not easy. I know we have challenges ahead of us, and all too many people are scared about what’s happening to wages, to energy bills, to the economy and to the climate.
And so I will continue to work tirelessly to make South Yorkshire the place I know it once was and can be again; a place of innovation, community, wealth and progress.
But if we’re going to overcome those challenges in front of us I’m going to need your help. Because if we work together as a community – if we continue to hope, and to turn that hope into action – I know we can restore the pride, the purpose and the prosperity of South Yorkshire.
Thank you