South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard speaks to Local Democracy Reporter Julia Armstrong about the outcome of a public consultation into his proposals for bus franchising, which would give more public control of services
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00:00So, just talking to Oliver Coppard, Mayor of South Yorkshire, you've just got the results
00:05of the public consultation on bus franchising. How are you feeling about it and how did it
00:10go?
00:11Yeah, I'm really pleased. Look, we've had over 7,500 responses to that bus consultation.
00:15That's 7,500 people who've told us how they feel about buses in South Yorkshire and what
00:20they want to see going forward. And what we overwhelmingly see from the public is a demand
00:24for change and a change that says actually the system is not good enough right now and
00:28we need to see improvements to that. And so what we want to do now is look through
00:32those responses, figure out exactly what people have told us and then in March we will take
00:35a decision about whether or not to take our buses back under public control in South Yorkshire.
00:40If you do take that decision, and I'm sure everybody in Sheffield and South Yorkshire
00:43hopes you are going to take that decision, what's the timeline?
00:47So the timeline from here is in March we take a decision one way or the other about whether
00:51or not to franchise our buses, bring them back so that we control the routes, the fares,
00:54the timetables, and then if we do take that decision in 2027 we will start franchising
01:00our buses. So buses at that point, some buses at least in South Yorkshire, will come back
01:04under public control and so we are deciding where buses run, when they run, how much they
01:09cost and doing that in the interest of the public. That process will then be finished
01:12by 2029.
01:13Fantastic.