Rail upgrade arrives at last

Cross-county journey claims blasted

THE Northern Powerhouse Minister has been accused of being “disrespectful” and “ignoring the evidence” after he claimed people within Yorkshire rarely commute to different areas of the county.

In an interview with BBC Radio Leeds, Jake Berry said people were unlikely to travel from West to South Yorkshire for work.

The minister made the claims after the Government sensationally rejected calls for a One Yorkshire devolution deal.

In a letter to Sheffield City Region Mayor Dan Jarvis, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire wrote: “The Government considers that the One Yorkshire devolution proposals do not meet our criteria for devolution.”

Speaking after the announcement, Mr Berry said: “Under the current legislation, One Yorkshire is not an economic geography which is recognised by the Treasury and I don’t think we can, without changing the law, proceed with the One Yorkshire deal.

“The judgement the Government made was that people who live in Leeds often don’t necessarily live in the same sort of economic travel to work area as people who may live as far south as Sheffield or anywhere in South Yorkshire, or even all the way over to Hull.”

His comments provoked a backlash, with Doncaster Council chief executive Jo Miller citing travel to work data that suggested there are in fact a significant number of commuters who regularly travel between those areas. ELECTRIFICATION of a railway in the North-West has only just been finished – nine months after its original completion date.

The failure to upgrade tracks from Bolton to Manchester before May 2018 was blamed for the severe disruption faced by passengers across the North last summer, as a new timetable was unable to run properly without it.

Today Northern will run a full timetable after longrunning strike action was called off, making it the first weekend since the end of last summer that the dispute has not affected services.

Northern’s Pete Myers said the development was “terrific news” for passengers.

She was referring to the latest statistics, which show that about 32,000 people a day commute from South Yorkshire to West Yorkshire, with 18,000 commuters undertaking the opposite journey.

This compares with just 4,500 people travelling from South Yorkshire to Greater Manchester and 1,700 commuting in the other direction.

Reacting to Mr Berry’s comments, Doncaster Council’s assistant director of strategy and performance, Lee Tillman, told The Yorkshire Post the Government was failing to engage with “the facts and the evidence base”.

“It’s just about looking at the evidence and saying: ‘What does the evidence tell us?’” he said.

“And just purely from a Doncaster point of view, we know that broadly as many people commute outside the city region as they do within it.

“People feel that there hasn’t necessarily been full engagement with the facts and the evidence base. The evidence is pretty clear in terms of how people commute.

“It just feels a little bit disrespectful.”

Some of the region’s MPs also rejected Mr Berry’s suggestion, with Keighley MP John Grogan pointing to the high use of public transport by commuters in his constituency, despite the limited capacity.

“The commuter trains and buses of the county are bursting at the seams each morning as commuters travel across Yorkshire to work,” he said.

“The main inhibiting factor is not distinct economic areas but slow trains and congested roads.”

The Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby, Robert Goodwill, added: “We are affected from a transport point of view by the lack of investment, sometimes 40 or 50 miles away from Scarborough. So it is important for us that the whole region works together.” REVAMP:

The evidence is pretty clear in terms of how people commute. Doncaster Council’s assistant director of strategy and performance, Lee Tillman.