Understanding Crawley’s road names

A couple of years back, I had the great privilege to speak at the naming of Scott Summers Court in Northgate, within the ward I represent. Scott Summers was a brave local lad, who died aged 23 in Afghanistan, one of many who lost their lives on all sides in that conflict and whose name we felt deserved to be recognised somewhere in the town he called home.

The naming of roads and buildings is one of those things we can do as a council which lacks physical impact, but which can carry huge meaning. There are certainly limits on what we can do, to begin with the postal service are likely to object if a name may well cause confusion. So, if we tried to name a road after Gareth Southgate in Pound Hill, the neighbourhood he lived in, it would be likely to be vetoed because of the neighbourhood of Southgate, a neighbourhood with no obvious connection other than the a name.

Secondly, it might not actually be our thing to name. If a developer comes to us and says that they have a name they want to use for a road or building, we technically do have the power to say ‘no’, but with the caveat that we need a strong enough reason to do so that we can justify the decision if they appeal. We certainly do not have any more than soft power to persuade them to take on a name.

Lastly, there are the ‘political’ considerations. We make it a general rule not to name anything after anyone who is still alive, to avoid anyone going on to do something so bad we’re required to change the name at a reasonable cost. There are also people who may well be popular with one group, but not another and those interests have to be balanced. In addition, there’s the risk of perverse outcomes. For instance, councillors took a big break from getting involved in naming things after a row about road naming in Maidenbower in the 1990s. I think there was a proposal to name a sequence of roads after famous Labour MPs (following on from those already named in Broadfield), until someone said that they really didn’t want to risk someone having to live at Four Skinner House.

Unfortunately, while councillors might not be the best source of names, I’m pretty convinced that developers aren’t. Instead of any meaningful names we end up with every town in the country following the same lists of composers, flowers, rivers and the like. It might help to sell property if it has a generic name, but it tells people nothing of the community they are rooted into.

One approach for dealing with this is to follow the example of the New Town planners and look at the history of what is being built upon. Rather than invent names from scratch, these planners went to pains to find names from the old tithe maps and maintain them in the layouts of the communities they were creating. The end result is something which blends old with new, meaning you can locate were you are even on maps far pre-dating that of the New Town.

Truth be told, I hadn’t been aware of this until the council were in the process of building new affordable housing in Three Bridges. The local forum were unhappy with the name which the council had somehow come up with and my view was that if we wanted the local community to adopt the new development, the least we could do was let them choose the name. After turning to the tithe maps ‘The Croft’ was named, and I’ve encouraged a similar process ever since.

Of course, this approach isn’t perfect (my friend who lived in Butts Close certainly got a fair amount of mickey taking about it at school), but it does help to avoid the bland uniformity of modern development and build that direct connection with the people and places whose legacies we are literally walking upon. Hopefully I’m not alone in feeling that way.