Crawley Borough Council gets back to work

Amongst all the buzz of the General Election, it would be too easy to miss the fact that the council has only just returned from its own local election, with the Annual Council meeting taking place last Friday.

I’m afraid that the title is a bit of a misnomer really, as council officers and councillors have never actually stopped working, but a lot of the decision-making shut downs when the election begins at the end of March each year and only gets up and running again in late May.

The reason for this is to do with election law, which requires that public resources are not be used to advocate for policy positions. In principle it’s a sensible rule to level the playing field, but in practice it even means some pretty basic uncontroversial decisions have to be put aside until the election is concluded and the committees are reappointed. This is what the Annual Council did last Friday.

While Annual Councils are always the most well-attended meetings by non-councillors, with friends and relatives attending in support of the new mayor, this Friday was better attended than usual with Airport Cars drivers highlighting the damage which Uber is doing to their business within the town.

From a licensing perspective Uber certainly pose a lot of issues for the council. The company isn’t licensed within the town and neither are their drivers, instead they are exploiting loopholes in the law, particularly those set out in the deregulation of taxi licensing by David Cameron’s Government shortly after the 2015 General Election (the problems with which were predicted at the time).

The end result is that where a passenger is put at risk by an Uber driver, no local licensing official has any power to enforce. In addition, Crawley Borough Council has some of the most stringent taxi licensing requirements in the country, not only requiring a detailed knowledge of the layout of the town, but training about things such as spotting those at risk of child sexual exploitation and the correct actions to take to keep those children safe. No such requirements exist with Uber in Crawley. The law needs to change.

Annual Council was much quieter this year than in previous years, which given it’s largely a ceremonial occasion was pleasant. Much of the time was spent thanking outgoing mayor Jilly Hart for her service and welcoming incoming mayor Sharmila Sivarajah into her new role.

In addition to the civic positions, Cllr Michael Jones was re-elected as council leader unopposed and reappointed cabinet members back to their current roles, and committee chairs were elected. While I had planned on remaining Chair of the Governance Committee a bit longer, given that there is only one meeting between now and the General Election, it didn’t really seem appropriate and consequently I was pleased to see Tim Lunnon, my immediate predecessor, take on the role.

There are a number of big decisions and some significant announcements due from the council over the next year. Unfortunately, triggering the General Election immediately after the local election not only means that the public has to pay the costs of running two elections in the town in the same year, but that we’re going straight back into purdah this Friday. Consequently, after last Friday the council may well be reconstituted, but until the General Election is resolved, everything is back on hold again.