Local manifestos in Crawley

In 2012, Crawley Labour regained three seats from the Conservatives, the first major gains for the party since the early 1990s. At that point it became clear that the 2014 Crawley Borough Council elections would be a genuine contest for control of the council.

As the newly-appointed Leader of the Opposition I then dedicated the next two years of my life to meeting with as many stakeholders as I could, attending every relevant training course I could find, and reading absolutely everything on the town and local government that I could get my hands on. I wanted to ensure that if Labour regained control, we would be ready to get to work on day one, with a deliverable plan for addressing the town’s major challenges. The end result of this work was our 2014 manifesto, the key goals of which have continued to guide much of our approach over the years which have followed.

I have always believed that any party serious about wanting to deliver for the community should at least be willing and able to produce a manifesto setting out what they would do if they were elected.

That is why at every Crawley Borough Council election since I became Group Leader, I always ensured that we produced a manifesto setting out our new commitments and renewing those we wished to continue taking forwards. Over the same time period I can recall one Conservative manifesto…perhaps another will appear before Thursday.

While I stood down as Labour’s Leader on the council last May, my successor has made it that that he intends to continue the trend and has again produced a manifesto for this year’s borough council election. This can be found on the Crawley Labour website, along with historic manifestos which we continue to list as a permanent record of everything we have fought to deliver for Crawley over the last decade.