Sarah Champion Calls on Government to Support a Viable Bus Network in Rotherham

Sarah Champion MP has called on the Government to provide additional funding to enable South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) to prevent bus service cuts in South Yorkshire that will leave Rotherham with just three services operating after 7PM.

Nine existing services in Rotherham are scheduled to be cut back from 24th July, part of a series of expected cuts that will see commercial bus companies withdraw from approximately one third of South Yorkshire’s existing bus services from October 2022.

In a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, Sarah said:

“The Government must, in the short term, commit funding to ensure the status quo is maintained and that South Yorkshire’s bus services are not subject to further cuts. In the long term, if the Government is serious about ‘levelling up’, it must commit the resources needed to repair the damage that decades of de-regulation, privatisation and under investment have wrought on our network.”

Commenting on the proposals, Sarah said:

“This latest round of cuts comes as a hammer blow to Rotherham’s already creaking bus network.’

‘Public transport in South Yorkshire is in a vicious cycle of decline. With fewer people using the buses, the bus companies continue to cut routes where they can’t make money, which means fewer people use the buses, so the companies make further cuts. This is utterly unsustainable.’

‘The rules governing our buses have created a broken market; private sector bus companies can run buses wherever and whenever they want, and keep all the profits. Meanwhile, the taxpayer is left to pay bus companies to run services in the areas where the routes aren’t profitable, if they are even able to find a company willing to take the tender.”

Highlighting the need for central Government investment, Sarah said:  

“We need Government investment in order to save South Yorkshire’s buses. And yet, South Yorkshire did not receive a single penny from the Government’s much heralded Bus Service Improvement Plan, despite just £1.2bn of the original £3bn fund being awarded.’

‘The Government has promised to deliver a ‘London style transport system’ outside of the capital as one of its 12 levelling-up missions. The cuts facing South Yorkshire show just how hollow Boris Johnson’s promises are. Instead of a vibrant integrated transport network, South Yorkshire’s already desperately poor bus network is to be cut to the bone.’

‘If the Government is serious about ‘levelling up’, this has to be more than a slogan. It will take sustained and substantial investment to achieve. But time and time again, the Conservative Government has demonstrated that they have little interest in delivering for the people of Rotherham.”

Sarah’s letter is available here