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After the last seven years, another broken commitment from the Government shouldn’t come as a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. Having talked a good game on fire safety after Grenfell, the Department for Communities and Local Government are now clarifying their remarks on making funding available to improve building safety by…
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Yesterday, I wrote to the UK’s National Statistician–the start of all riveting stories, eh? The reason I had cause to write is that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are gearing up for the 2021 census and efforts have been made for some time to broaden the range of ethnic groups represented to include Sikhs.…
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Genuine ideological differences do exist in politics and that means disagreement is sometimes inevitable. At other times, such as at Full Council meetings, there may be more smoke than fire to the argument. However, there is often more negotiation and co-operation taking place behind the scenes than I think most people realise. One of the…
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Being a Labour councillor I get to meet a lot of public sector workers. My mother spent her career as a public servant, teaching and undertaking social work. If there’s one thing you learn about public sector workers its that almost without exception they don’t do what they do for money, they do it because…
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If you’re a representative for an area, I believe you have a duty to represent it. The actions of Crawley Tories increasingly say otherwise. West Sussex County Council takes most of Crawley’s Council Tax, their income is in the hundreds of millions. By contrast, Crawley Borough Council gets £15m, almost half of what we got…
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There’s a lot of discussion at the moment about the abuse which has been directed against MPs, particularly during the recent General Election and especially on social media. Those of us in local government are a less obvious target, my Twitter followers are in the hundreds not the thousands, but it does still happen. I’ve…
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A number of people were taken aback by the announcement this week that five South East Clinical Commissioning Groups were in special measures, and Crawley’s was amongst them. Of course, this rating doesn’t reflect the quality of the care, only the financial status of the organisation with more being spent on care by the CCG…
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This afternoon I attended a meeting at the Montefiore Institute organised by Muslims Friday Prayer, a combined effort of Ghosia Muslim Society Crawley and Minhaj-ul-Quran International Crawley. Having been a Three Bridges county councillor, I know the Institute well but this was the first time that I had visited it in its capacity as a Mosque. The…
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Yesterday was the first full County Council of the new council year. Having taken the decision not to run again last May, I can honestly say that I don’t miss it. In general, Full Council meetings are mostly theatre, with much of the more serious scrutiny and debate having already taken place through the committees…
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It has been claimed that the NHS is our national religion, we certainly all call upon it in moments of desperation, usually on matters of life and death. So, it is no surprise that when we hear about cuts to our local services people get very angry. No wonder then that the Government is increasingly…
Peter Lamb for Crawley 