When Supertram was brought into public control, it was meant to get better. So why the recent chaos?

Dear members — Do you use the Supertram? Or maybe we should rephrase that. Do you try to use Supertram and then give up and use the bus? As passengers will know, over the last few weeks, the service has been terrible. So bad, in fact, that the mayor and his team went out to tram stops last Friday to apologise and give people free tickets and chocolate. At a hastily arranged public meeting on Monday, Mayor Oliver Coppard sought to explain what had been going wrong, and how long we would have to wait for Supertram to get better.

It’s a bonus edition today, with a second story for Tribune members only. Rumours continue to swirl about mysterious American conglomerates and even Middle Eastern petrostates with an interest in buying Sheffield Wednesday. But for every international magnate, there’s a local businessman keen to get in on the action. We cover the local lads looking to insert themselves into the new regime — or even putting an offer in themselves.

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Kelham Island Museum’s much loved Victorian Christmas Market returns on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th December. The Market invites you to step back in time and experience the charm of a traditional Christmas. With over 80 stalls offering an array of Sheffield-made wares, gifts and food – all hosted in the iconic industrial setting. From brass bands and carollers to Santa’s Grotto and the cosy Millowners Arms, it’s the ideal festive day out. For more information on the event, click the link below.

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⚽ Twelve former police officers would have faced gross misconduct cases over the Hillsborough disaster had they still been working when an Independent Office of Police Conduct investigation began in 2012, a report from the police watchdog has found. As well as naming the 12 officers, the report also concluded there had been complacency before the match, "fundamental failures" on the day, and "concerted efforts" to blame fans afterwards. A response from the South Yorkshire Police Federation which said the report was a “waste of taxpayers’ money” and that officers had been subjected to “trial by media” was branded as an “absolute disgrace” by Margaret Aspinall from the Hillsborough Family Support Group.

In other Hillsborough news, Sheffield MP Clive Betts has called on whoever buys the club to knock down the ground’s West Stand or Leppings Lane end, where the 1989 tragedy took place. Speaking to BBC Radio Sheffield, he said the incoming owner should make it a priority to replace the stand, adding it was "quite awful that it is still there 36 years later".

📳 A racist meme shared on social media purporting to show a “Sheffield family” has been exposed as a fake. The meme, which was shared on Facebook sites including one called One Hundred And Ten Percent British, showed a large Asian family supposedly celebrating the decision to lift the two-child benefit cap. However, an investigation by the fact-checking organisation Full Fact found that the photo was actually taken in Pakistan in 2014. The One Hundred And Ten Percent British page is regularly shared on Sheffield Facebook sites. 

🎄And it’s Christmas come early for some of those living in homes where Andrew Milne has purchased the freehold. One got in touch today to tell us that he and his neighbours have just received another letter from Milne. Despite having previously sent a high court document and demands for £25,000 to this resident, Milne has now reached out to offer a “special Christmas offer” of a mere £8,500 plus conveyancing fees (his ground rent is… £20 a year.) Will he be taking up this irresistible bargain? “No, definitely not.”

When Supertram was brought into public control, it was meant to get better. So why the recent chaos?

By Dan Hayes

In March 2024, after 30 years of being run by the private company Stagecoach, Supertram finally came home to Sheffield. “One small step for tram” proclaimed advertising hoardings on tram stops across the city while a delighted Oliver Coppard hailed “a historic day for South Yorkshire”. A new dawn had broken, had it not?

Fast forward to November 2025 and that dawn seems like something of a false one. Last week, The Tribune was sent a barrage of emails from Supertram passengers complaining that the service had become unusable. We were told trams were being cancelled, often at peak times, with those that were still running so overcrowded that some passengers couldn’t get on at all. Fares were being left uncollected as conductors either couldn’t get down the tram, or just weren’t there at all.

At a hastily arranged meeting at the Showroom Cinema on Monday night, South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard offered his mea culpa. He explained that for most of the time since public control Supertram had been operating at high levels of reliability and punctuality, often topping 98-99%. However, for the last month, punctuality had dropped to around 90% at times. This was still substantially better than the privately-operated bus system, Coppard was keen to point out, but he accepted it wasn’t good enough. “It’s been really hard for people, and we’re really sorry,” he said.

The disruption was caused by a “perfect storm” of factors, he claimed. The first and most significant was a recent change to the rota, which took effect in early November. Coppard revealed that when they inherited the system, staff turnover was running at a “far too high” 20%, and said that rota change was brought in to improve conditions for staff on issues like work-life balance. In the long term he promised the new rota was going to be better but in the short term accepted it had caused “a bit of havoc” on the network.

Then, overhead cables were damaged on the Yellow route near Ikea and in Arbourthorne, affecting both those bits of the network and other places on the same lines. There were also more drivers on sick leave (not unusual in winter) and on top of that several drivers had recently retired at around the same time. These staffing and maintenance issues were compounded by disruption caused by the football, with trams cancelled to Hillsborough on the day of the Steel City derby. Adding to the perfect storm was an actual storm, with Storm Claudia causing localised flooding on several parts of the network.

But what was Coppard actually going to do about it? First, a media apology blitz. In a coordinated social media campaign last week, the mayor accepted things had gone badly wrong and promised to get things back on track as quickly as he could. The mayor’s team also did outreach at tram stops across the city, giving out free tickets and chocolates by way of apology. 

Second, a temporary timetable has been brought in on the Blue and Yellow routes. This has changed the frequency of trams from every 12 minutes to every 15 minutes to free up capacity. Coppard reported that this had already led to both punctuality and reliability improving. 

The timetable change was a short term fix, and the network should be back to normal early in the New Year, he explained. Longer term improvements to the service would take more time. After all, when Supertram was brought back into public control last year, it was losing a massive £7 million a year.

He said that turning that around will take time and a lot of money. But that seems to be flowing. £12 million has already been spent on improvements to tracks and overhead lines, and the network’s first new station in years has also been added at Magna in Rotherham. South Yorkshire has recently won £630 million from the government to renew the network, including purchasing a new fleet of trams, 25 of the 32 of which are now reaching the end of their natural life. This was, he claimed, the “most significant investment in [South Yorkshire’s] public transport for years”.

But money isn’t everything. Coppard said he wants to see a cultural change within Supertram, from being profit-driven to being a true public service. “This is a network that has run for 30 years under private control and when you take that on you don’t get rid of all the people and just start again with a whole new team of people working in a different way,” he said.

However, while Coppard might not want profit-making to be the core ethos of Supertram, it can’t keep losing money forever. Supertram has improved slightly on that front (now losing just £6m a year). The mayor believes the finances can be shored up by getting more people on the network, by implementing new pricing strategies, and by integrating with the bus network after that comes under public control. The recent decision to allow dogs on trams (with their owners) might seem inconsequential, he added, but was an important step in making Supertram more “people-focused”.

SuperTram is a missed opportunity for Sheffield. How can we make it more useful?

We crunch the data, which shows our tram network is being left behind by cities like Manchester and Nottingham

Sheffield TribuneDaniel Timms

However, as The Tribune has written before, one of the best ways of bringing in more money to Supertram would be to extend the network so it’s much more useful for the majority of Sheffielders who don't live near a stop. Coppard again confirmed that this is the ambition, but made clear it would take government funding over and above that which has already been promised. He revealed that just to take a spur from the top of West Street up to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital would cost between £60-£100 million.

And while it is possible to run tram-trains on the Don Valley Line to Stocksbridge, this would need a new tram stop at Sheffield Victoria station on the Wicker to unlock it. “That is a complicated and expensive piece of infrastructure,” he said. “We’re talking to the government at the moment.”

The local lads looking to get in on the Wednesday action

Football is an expensive game these days. You might assume that, given the Owls seem to be shedding Championship points as frequently as the former Ski Village catches fire, the price tag attached to the club would be relatively modest. You’d be wrong. The only known offer that administrators have received so far, £20 million from former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, was quickly turned down. Whoever eventually takes on the task of clawing Wednesday out of its current mess will have to hand over at least £30m — and possibly as much as £40m — for the privilege. 

And thus the chances of the Owls being bought by a local businessperson are slim. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way for a born-and-bred Sheffielder to have some say in the future direction of the club. After all, following the disastrous reign of the Thai tuna tycoon, international buyers likely see the wisdom of attaching a recognisable Sheffield personality to their bid, to reassure once-bitten and twice-shy fans that someone involved truly understands the club. At the very least, an advisor with local knowledge might stop them proposing a merger with Wednesday’s bitter rivals.

So, here’s our run down of the local names we know to be throwing their hat in the ring.