Open Letter to Mayor Oliver Coppard: Will South Yorkshire Publish Bus Safety Data under Franchising

On 23 August 2025, I submitted FOI requests to Greater Manchester asking why promised bus safety data has still not been published. The lack of transparency around safety performance is deeply concerning.

Now, with South Yorkshire preparing to launch bus franchising in September 2027, I believe it is crucial that lessons are learned from both Greater Manchester’s failings and Transport for London’s long-standing practice of publishing quarterly bus safety data.

Below I publish in full my open letter to Oliver Coppard, Mayor of South Yorkshire, urging SYMCA to commit to publishing Bus Safety Performance Data as part of its franchised system.

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Open Letter

Oliver Coppard

Mayor of South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA)

11 Broad Street West

Sheffield S1 2BQ

E: mayor@southyorkshire-ca.gov.uk

cc: SYMCA Transport Officers; Tom Kearney (#LondonBusWatch)

Date: 31st August 2025

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RE: Safety Transparency in the South Yorkshire Bus Franchising Programme

Dear Mayor Coppard,

I welcome South Yorkshire’s decision to move to franchising from 5 September 2027—an opportunity to reset standards on reliability, affordability, accessibility, and accountability across the network.

Having reviewed SYMCA’s Franchising Scheme 2025 and allied papers, I’m concerned that while the scheme covers the legal framework (area, contracting, exemptions, etc.), it does not include any requirement to collect and publish bus safety performance data (e.g., collisions, injuries, fatalities, passenger falls, driver assaults, near misses) for public scrutiny.

Likewise, SYMCA’s refreshed Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) 2024 emphasises a network that is “safe and inclusive,” with work to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve personal security—commendable priorities—but it does not commit to publishing operational safety incident data for the bus network. The BSIP highlights ASB initiatives and better reporting with partners (e.g., Barnsley Interchange) yet still frames “safety” largely as perception and policing rather than measured safety outcomes (crash and casualty data).

South Yorkshire’s 2020 Bus Review called for stronger leadership and accountability and for learning from places like TfL—where quarterly Bus Safety Data (by route/operator/borough) has been published since 2014. Franchising was explicitly recommended as the route to clearer accountability.

With franchising now confirmed, South Yorkshire has a chance to lead nationally on safety transparency—and to avoid the pitfalls seen elsewhere when promises to publish safety data were made but not delivered.

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My requests

1. Commitment to publication

Will SYMCA commit to quarterly publication of Bus Safety Performance Data—including collisions, injuries (by severity), fatalities, passenger falls, driver/operative assaults, and near misses—disaggregated at least by route, operator, district and incident type?

2. Standards and governance

What data standards, validation processes, and governance arrangements will SYMCA adopt to ensure operators submit consistent, high-quality safety incident data from day one of franchising?

3. Systems and integration

Which IT systems or databases will be used to capture, process, and publish safety data? How will this integrate with SYMCA’s performance management and public dashboards, given the scheme’s wider emphasis on reliability and customer service?

4. KPIs and public reporting

Will safety KPIs (e.g., collision rate per million km, injury rate per passenger km, falls per million boardings, assaults per million driver hours) be embedded alongside punctuality, reliability and patronage in SYMCA’s franchising and BSIP reporting? If so, when will those KPIs and baselines be published?

5. Consultation on format

Will SYMCA consult the public and workforce (including bus drivers) on the format of published safety data (e.g., open data CSVs, route-level summaries, quarterly PDFs, map dashboards) to ensure accessibility and usefulness?

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Why this matters now

The Franchising Scheme establishes the framework to set standards. If safety data transparency is not embedded now, it risks being sidelined later.

The BSIP champions a “safe and inclusive” network and documents ASB actions, but operational safety outcomes (collisions, injuries, fatalities) remain unreported publicly without an explicit commitment.

The 2020 Bus Review argued franchising is the path to clearer leadership and accountability—publishing safety performance data is a direct, practical expression of that accountability.

I would be grateful for a clear response to these questions and a timetable for next steps.

Yours sincerely,

Lee Odams

(writing in a personal capacity as a private individual)

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Why I Am Publishing This Letter

Safety transparency matters. SYMCA has rightly set bold targets for reliability, affordability, accessibility, and integration. But without public reporting of safety data, passengers, drivers, and communities cannot have full confidence in the system.

Publishing this letter in full ensures there is a public record of the questions now being asked of South Yorkshire’s leaders.

— Lee Odams