Transport chiefs join call for local decision-making on railways

PUBLIC transport bosses in South and West Yorkshire have joined in a call to the Government to devolve rail funding for the region from Whitehall and place decisions with elected local councillors.

Both West and South Yorkshire’s Integrated Transport Authorities, have signed up with the other four largest urban transport authorities outside London, in a bid to persuade ministers to transfer key responsibilities over local rail services to local representatives.

The Government is consulting on whether to allow more local decision-making on funding rail schemes, which would also involve working closely with local businesses. It has already signalled its support in principle for further devolution of powers over local rail services.

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Members of the seven authorities, which also include those in Greater Manchester, Tyne and Wear, Merseyside, and the West Midlands, which together serve 11 million people, said they believed that taking decisions more locally would bring improved accountability and help to ensure that rail, tram and bus are better integrated.

Coun Mick Jameson, chairman of South Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority, said: “No one knows the local rail network better than the people who live in the area and use the services day in, day out.

“Over the past few years more and more people have been turning to rail. Now is the time to build on this success story by giving the ITAs, and their local authority partners, the responsibility for the planning, oversight and development of those networks.

“That means making us, rather than Whitehall, responsible for networks in the West Midlands and Northern rail networks.”

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Representatives from all six ITAs said they had agreed common principles on the way forward on devolution in the North.

It is hoped that this approach will complement a proposition to be put forward for the West Midlands by its passenger transport body Centro.

Coun Jameson said SYITA already plays an important role in its local rail network through being a co-signatory to the Northern Rail franchise, which give it powers to make changes to the services on the Northern network.

The proposal is to go beyond this role to becoming the franchising authority for the Northern network, together with the other northern ITAs.

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“The ITAs working together on local solutions will mean we will be able to pool funding and use our local knowledge to make sure that the rail network meets our local needs,” added Coun Jameson.

“But this cannot be devolution at any price. For devolution to work we will need a fair deal on costs, subsidies and risks. We will not sign up to any deal on devolution which will leave passengers worse off than they would have been without devolution.”