West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin's record on buses under fire as Lib Dem brands it ‘appalling’

Stewart Golton who leads Leeds City Council’s Lib Dem group said Ms Brabin had failed to “effectively address” address the crisis within the local bus network.

Ms Brabin, whose office has been contacted for comment, became mayor last year and has started the process of bringing bus services in West Yorkshire into public control.

She’s blamed government-enforced timescales for the time that’s likely to take, with private operators still set to be in control until at least the end of 2023.

Earlier this month, First’s West Yorkshire chief admitted his company was running its “worst service in 40 years”, with a driver shortage blamed for most of the reliability issues that are affecting passengers.

But speaking at a full council meeting on Wednesday, Councillor Golton said the buck stopped with the mayor.

A £2 cap on all single bus tickets in West Yorkshire, dubbed the ‘mayor’s fares’, was brought in in October, but Councillor Golton was scathing about its effectiveness.

He said: “She’s been around for quite a while now and all I can say is her record is appalling.

“Because we’ve got fewer buses turning up, they’re less reliable and less frequent.

“They might be a little bit cheaper now, but because there’s so few of them on our streets, no-one’s taking up the offer for the cheaper fares, because all those people out there suffering from the cost-of-living crisis can’t trust the current transport system to get them there.”

Labour councillors defended Ms Brabin’s record, however, and hit out operators for taking government cash while still cutting routes, despite the fact that funding is supposed to be propping up services.

Council leader James Lewis said: “We don’t believe in franchising. We believe in wholly publicly owned buses.

“Take the profit out of it, take the business out of it. Run it as a democractially controlled, publicly-run service.”

Councillors later passed a Labour motion calling for an independent investigation into how bus operators have been subsidised by the taxpayer since the start of the pandemic.

Councillor Lewis added: “This reminds me of the PPE scandal when we saw this wretched Conservative government throwing millions and millions of pounds away for products and businesses they were mates with, for absolutely no public benefit.”

He told Conservative councillors that if they “don’t vote for an independent investigation, they’ll find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

But Leeds’ Conservative group leader Andrew Carter said: “For you to sit there and pretend the mayor can’t do anything about this and the (West Yorkshire Combined Authority) transport committee is powerless, then why the hell are you there?

“If you can’t sort out the timing of the bus services and the efficient running of the bus services, then you’ll never get round to getting more buses and getting buses back on routes that don’t exist anymore.”

Councillor Carter said people “want to know what this mayor is going to do about it,” adding, “and up to press, precious little.”

Addressing Labour councillors, he said: “It’s time you got the bus companies together and make them deliver effective, on time, clean and regular services. And yes, it is within your power to do that.”