Nine years of delivering for Crawley against the odds, nine years of a Labour council

In 2014, I led Labour back into administration at Crawley Borough Council after eight years of Conservative control, the only period of Conservative control in the history of the borough.

Over those nine years we have to steer the town through Austerity, Brexit, COVID, and a Cost of Living crisis, for two years of which with the added challenge of No Overall Control.

I can’t claim that we’ve secured everything we wanted for the town and our fellow residents over those nine years–I firmly believe the council’s ambitions for Crawley shouldn’t be so limited, but in the face of the greatest challenges ever faced by local government in the UK, Labour-run Crawley has managed to consistently out-perform other councils across the country.

Throughout centrally-imposed Austerity, we have managed to set a balanced budget without frontline cuts every year barring that of the pandemic. I know of no other council who can boast of such an achievement, with increasing numbers now going under and most local authorities stripped back to the barest of provision. With the commercial space in the new Town Hall we now have the chance to generate the additional revenue necessary to survive further cuts enforced upon us by the Conservative Government.

Over this period, Crawley has been one of the best authorities in the country for the delivery of new affordable housing, almost alone in managing to build more new council properties than those lost to Right-to-Buy.

Rather than cutting back, we’ve invested in leisure facilities across the town. The faded glory which was Tilgate Park in 2014 has been turned around into a major regional attraction, a recipient of TripAdvisor’s award for the top 10% of attractions worldwide.

Years before the pandemic, we realised the vulnerability of local employment and the limits it placed upon residents’ opportunities, so we developed the town’s first ever Employment and Skills plan. Over the years which have followed we’ve been working at scale to put the infrastructure in place to enable this change, through projects such as Employ Crawley, the Town Centre Skills Academy, the Crawley Innovation Centre, Gigabit Broadband, in addition to widespread investment in Manor Royal and the Town Centre. By the start of the pandemic Crawley had become the densest centre of employment in the country outside of London and, despite our economy being hit harder by the COVID rules than any other in the country and there being a complete absence of any support recognising this from central government, the town has seen a fast recovery.

Under Labour, Crawley declared a Climate Emergency and has prepared the town’s first an evidence-based Climate Emergency Action Plan to enable the transition to a Green Crawley. In addition to our efforts made to transition locally, Crawley’s location, access to logistics and engineering skills, make the town a perfect location for the development of Green industry, something we have been working to attract to the town over the last three years.

Of course, people will complain about the roads and pavements, the restrictions at the tip, the loss of Children and Family Centres, of inability to access social care support, and of a struggling fire service. These things are all true, but none of them have ever been controlled by Crawley Borough Council. They are all services for which West Sussex County Council receives the funding and the powers. A council run by the Conservative Party, with many of the Conservative councillors up for election in Crawley this year, also being those responsible for the state of these services with their county councillor hats on.

I won’t deny there have been mistakes during Labour’s time running the Crawley Borough Council. Underestimating the cost of the Data Centre and the over-charging of rent on a group of council properties are the two examples I can think of. Of course, the latter was a consequence of a spreadsheet error and we returned the money to those affected as soon as the overpayment was identified, despite legal advice no repayment was necessary. In the case of the former, the works were essential and consequently so was the expenditure, but it did highlight failings in project management we’ve subsequently addressed.

We’re not perfect, elected representatives aren’t professionals, but the values we claim to have are what we genuinely what motivate us and when compared to councils of our type up and down the country, Crawley under Labour consistently comes out as a top performer.

That’s what’s at stake on Thursday. A vote for Labour is a vote to keep Crawley moving forward. Any other vote risks a return of the same group of Conservative councillors whose record at West Sussex County Council contains more holes than the roads they are responsible for maintaining.