Minutes:
It was noted that two public questions had been received.
The following question was received from Green New Deal UK.
“The Secretary General of the United Nations has called the climate crisis a code red for humanity, and a thundering wake up call. Can the Mayoral Combined Authority look at itself in the mirror and honestly say that the ambition, scale and urgency of its current response matches up to this assessment? Professor Sir David King says the next 3-4 years will determine the future of humanity. What plans do intend to develop? What more is the MCA going to do?”
Mayor Jarvis replied that the simple answer to the question was no.
He commented that the global, national, regional and local responses did not yet match up to the scale of the crisis but the MCA were acting strongly on things within their remit. They were also looking at everything they did, both so that more could be done and so that delivery on net zero was not a niche concern but one that ran through all the work of the MCA.
Spending and investments were being reformed so that every penny created pressure on partners and clients to do their part to cut their emissions.
The MCA was investing in public transport to get people out of cars and the Bus Service Improvement Plan set out an ambitious vision to transform the service.
Hundreds of millions of pounds were being invested in an Active Travel Plan with the aim of creating a network of 640 miles of walking and cycling routes. A Woodland Creation Officer had been appointed to support ambitions for creating woodland and tree planting. The MCA had also made a strategic commitment to natural flood management.
In the next few months the MCA would be determining the target spend per year for the next five years on decarbonisation measures and the principle that decarbonisation efforts were embedded across all MCA investment and spending.
Mayor Jarvis accepted that there were areas that could and must be improved and gave assurances that the MCA would do all that it could within the limits of its powers and resources.
The following question was received from South Yorkshire Freedom Riders.
“The self-financing £12 Metro Gold Card in Tyne and Wear has been a great success. It allows ENCT card holders to travel on Metro, the Shields Ferry and on Northern Rails services between Newcastle and Sunderland for free. It has health, social, environmental and local economy benefits including a £1m surplus from the scheme. The Freedom Riders previously raised the idea of a South Yorkshire Gold Card which would help compensate for the loss of train ad travel benefits in 2014. Are there plans to implement a similar self-financing scheme for South Yorkshire’s 300,000 pensioners? If not, why not?”
In response, Mayor Jarvis commented that it was the MCA’s ambition to encourage more people onto public transport and to enable pensioners and other groups to be able to travel more easily.
In direct answer to the question, it was worth noting that the situation in South Yorkshire was different to the situation in the north east. In South Yorkshire, rail services were predominantly operated by Northern Rail, whereas the Tyne and Wear Metro was owned and operated by the authorities in the area.
Officers had been asked to explore with Northern Rail what could be done to achieve a similar scheme in South Yorkshire and had been informed that this would require the MCA to meet the cost in full at a commercial cost that would be far more that the £12 charged on the Metro. Officers would continue to scope whether other arrangements may be possible.
The region’s public transport system was still under enormous pressure and reliant on government funding. Any additional concessions would have to be at the expense of other concessions and investment to keep the system afloat. It was the duty of the Mayor, Leaders and MCA to make difficult decisions about what was done with the limited resources available.
More than £6m had been allocated to extend support for young people aged between 11 and 21 with the introduction of the Zoom Beyond pass and there were also a number of concession support schemes for the elderly, including a 50% discount on Northern Rail and the extension of ENCTS to the Supertram network.
Unfortunately, at the moment, without certainty on recovery funding from the government it was extremely difficult for any new funding commitments to be made although the situation would be kept under review.