Former mayor hits back at claims he ‘missed the bus’ on public transport

BARNSLEY Central MP Dan Jarvis has slammed a local councillor’s comments on his work during time as South Yorkshire Mayor – adding the Lib Dems are ‘not famed for being able to see the bigger picture’.

At last month’s full council meeting, Coun Steve Hunt, who represents Darton East as a Liberal Democrat, said bus franchising must be given the ‘green light’ in the town before it is too late.

Calls for franchising the county’s bus services have been backed by recently-elected Oliver Coppard, despite Barnsley Council bosses warning such a move could come with a ‘huge cost’.

The cost of the assessment process, estimated at £5m, will be funded by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and at no cost to Barnsley Council.

It will require bus operators to provide information about their services to help councils and the SYMCA assess the viability of a franchise.

Coun Hunt said that Mr Jarvis ‘missed the bus’ on his promises to improve the town’s buses, prompting the MP to say the fault lies with the government.

But Dan told the Chronicle: “On my watch – despite the Herculean efforts required to unlock a devolution deal, a long-term decline in bus patronage and of course, dealing with the massive impact of the worst pandemic in living history – we kept the buses going throughout, so that our key workers could get to work, and residents could access the public services they needed.

“When operators announced they were going to increase bus fares, I immediately took charge of a successful campaign to stop them doing it.

“We did everything we possibly could to invest in our bus services and did the necessary hard graft to integrate the passenger transport executive into the mayoral combined authority, reduce fares for young people and crucially, to bring forward highly credible funding proposals to government.”

At the meeting, leader of Barnsley Council Sir Steve Houghton responded to Coun Hunt by saying the patronage of bus services in South Yorkshire since the pandemic has reduced to below 70 per cent, leading to ‘massive financial pressure’.

“For the last 12 to 18 months, the government have covered that gap,” he added.

“The government have told us in terms of those revenues, that will end in October. If that were to come back to the council, that will be a substantial increase in council tax bills for Barnsley residents. That is not appropriate.

“All of my members want to see a publicly-run transport system, not just buses but rail as well.

“But what we are not prepared to do is to put council tax bills up by five, ten, 15 or 20 per cent to pay for it.”

Mr Jarvis added: “That our bus network faces the big challenges it does, is entirely because of the complete failure of national government to fund our bus services improvement plan and a Levelling Up Fund bid based on improving our bus network.

“I did everything within my power to improve the bus services and Mayor Coppard is building on this work.

“The fault lies with the government who have pushed South Yorkshire into a position where we could now lose a third of our services.

“I know the Lib Dems are not famed for being able to see the bigger picture, but if Coun Hunt wants to be taken seriously, he might want to reflect on the role of national government who hold the purse strings and are ultimately responsible for the pressures we face.”