The local election begins in Crawley

This week marks the official start of the 2023 Local Elections. We are used to having a local election every year in Crawley, with a third of the borough council up for election in each of the first three years of the cycle and the county council elected in the fourth year. Yet, councils are also permitted to hold elections by half, with 50% of seats up every other year, or all-out elections in which the whole council is elected once every four years. As these different cycles align in 2023, with almost every council having at least some seats up for election, the 4th May (AKA Star Wars Day) will be the biggest electoral test parties face before the next General Election.

What do these elections decide?
In Crawley, we will be electing a third of Crawley Borough Council (every part of the town except Tilgate). When these seats were last contested Labour managed to be the top-performing party in seven of the twelve seats up for election this year. With Labour currently holding 19 seats on the council and the Conservatives on 16, with a vacancy in a Conservative seat, a loss of a single Labour seat to the Conservatives would see the council put into No Overall Control for only the third time in its history (albeit with Labour being able to maintain control through use of the Mayor’s casting vote), a loss of two seats would see the Conservatives retake control after nine years in opposition.

Crawley’s services are split between West Sussex County Council (which has been run by local Conservatives since 1997) and Crawley Borough Council (which has had a Labour leader since 2014), a rough breakdown of which authority is responsible for what can be found in the table below:

Both councils control significant areas of responsibility, but critically only Crawley Borough Council can claim to act as the voice of Crawley, with the ability to lobby and respond on any area it decides.

They also control large sums of public money, although with some major differences in where they generate the funding, particularly when it comes down to local council tax.

How to vote
Crawley has a long history of extremely close results at elections. In 2005, Crawley was won with the slimmest majority in the country, just 37 votes. The 2006 Crawley Borough Council elections ended up running even more closely, when after a draw in the total number of seats, there was a draw in the total number of votes for the Labour and Conservative candidates in Broadfield North, with the Conservatives for the first time taking control of Crawley Borough Council due to the coin toss (although I understand it was actually two envelopes with ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ in them). During my time running campaigns in Crawley I’ve seen seats won and lost on a handful of votes around a dozen times. If you live in Crawley, there’s simply no evidence to back up the idea that your vote doesn’t make a difference.

This year, a Labour vote in any part of Crawley could make a difference. Electoral Calculus, who model probable electoral outcomes, currently have every council seat in the town going red this May (although their model is much more questionable at the ward-level than the constituency-level).

However, there are a few things you need to do if you want to be able to vote this May:

• The first is to make sure you are registered to vote. You can register in just a couple of minutes anytime between now and 11.59pm on 17th April by going to: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
• Secondly, if you are likely to be busy on the day, might be away or just want to save Labour campaigners from having to knock your door on the day, make sure to apply to vote early by post (it really does make it easier for us to win), by going to: https://postalvote.labour.org.uk/ the form to vote by post needs to be returned to the council by 5pm on 18th April, so make sure to apply early.
• If you really want to vote in-person, then make a plan for polling day so you know where you are going and at what time (polling stations are open from 7am to 10pm). This will be printed on the polling card which the council will send out to you before election day, but if you do need to check, you can find the address here: https://iwillvote.org.uk/
• Lastly, for the first time ever, they will be asking everyone to show a form of ID before they vote this May, a list of ID they will accept can be found here. If you do not have one of these forms of ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate using this link (deadline 5pm on the 25th April).

The countdown to the most significant contest before the next General Election has begun. Make sure you get to have your say.