Doncaster elections 2025: Andrew Walmsley says Westminster must give city more money in interview

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has offered one-to-one interviews with every single candidate for Doncaster mayor – offering them the opportunity to sell themselves and their parties to voters and getting them to answer important questions.

Walmsley, an engineer by trade, told the LDRS he would be a local champion for Doncaster and for Yorkshire.

He said: “I don’t receive orders from Whitehall, Westminster or anything like that. The Yorkshire Party is for Yorkshire.

“I want to improve adult social care, as well as adult re-training.

“It’s little things, like if a steelworks closed and it was a Doncaster business, people will need re-training to get the same standard of job.

“We’ve repeatedly been told in Doncaster ‘Oh the coal mines have gone, you’ve got to get a new job’, I want to see people with jobs with the same pay, to the same standard, the same protections.

“I don’t want to sit there and say ‘oh get on your bike and go find anything’ and re-training is part of that.”

Walmsley said the council needs to make facilities and services easier to access in Doncaster.

He commended the planned use of a disused commercial unit in Waterdale for NHS services, but said he wants to see “doctors and clinics outside the town centre as well”.

He said: “We need to make things more accessible to people. There’s no point having great services if you can’t get to them, which is where transport comes in.

“Do we need to look at aiming bus routes to different areas? Not everyone drives – some people can’t drive for different reasons and there is a lot of the more vulnerable in society that can’t drive.”

Walmsley accused the Labour government of giving disabled people in Doncaster, and across the UK, “a kick in the teeth” after the cuts to personal independence payments (PIP).

He said: “We voted the Tories out. If you were to go off stereotypes, that’s a great win for disabled rights.

“So why is it now that Westminster Labour have suddenly decided that you can just cut PIP across the board, which isn’t what people say.

“They are framing it as standing up for the worker against the work-shy. PIP is not an out-of-work benefit. It’s to help people cope with the cost of living expenses caused by disability.

“We’re supposed to be a progressive, first world nation and we should not be turning our back on disabled people. I will need to look what I can do to mitigate that.”

On top of his commitments on social care, education and transport, Walmsley has said he wants to build new homes and support a new hospital in Doncaster. The LDRS asked him where the money for these commitments is coming from.

He responded: “I have considered is there a need for a council tax revaluation, but I think it has to be from Westminster but it is something I will push for.

“I’m also going to sit there, and more reasonable people may tell me I’m going to bang my head against a brick wall, but I’m going to sit there and tell the purse-string holders in London to give us the money.

“They can’t sit there and say we don’t do enough to be worth the money. No, a well-funded state provides for a thriving private sector that pays the tax back into a well-funded state. I will quite simply be telling them I want more.”

Walmsley was asked by the LDRS what experience he has to head up a £700m council.

He said: “The core thing of engineering is you’re finding the best appropriate balance; how well will it do what it’s supposed to do; how much it costs; how much it lasts; how repairable it is.

“So while I’ve never managed a budget that big, and I won’t pretend I have, I believe the underpinning skills that I have are directly relevant to this.”

The LDRS asked Walmsley how he decided he would run for mayor and what motivated him to put his hat in the ring.

He said: “When I started my own charity it was because I was sat there saying things on Twitter and I realised just gobbing off on the internet doesn’t change anything.

“It was the same logic again. If I get elected I can change things, if I don’t get elected hopefully I can pile on pressure.

“It’s far more than being a gobby little idiot on Twitter… I can make some difference and deliver for the people of Doncaster.

“It’s four or five generations [of my family] in Doncaster… not that I’m going to stand outside Tickhill and make a video saying this is where I used to get off the bus.”