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Two major announcements for local government came out of conference season, both from Conservative Conference. The most reported part of the Chancellor’s speech was that business rates would in future be retained by councils. Even without the ability to vary rates in both directions this could be great news, yet councils have responded with considerable
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Local government is responsible for almost a quarter of public spending, so it’s not surprising councils have seen significant cuts under the Government’s austerity agenda. Yet, while Cameron praised councils in 2010 as the ‘most efficient’ part of the public sector, during his term of office council budgets have shrunk twice as fast as central
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One of local government’s main responsibilities is planning, be that ruling on individual applications–such as for an extension—or strategically planning how towns and communities will evolve over coming decades. Planning is one of those issues which can seem boring or irrelevant until it forces you to engage with it. Most people’s first contact with the
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When Labour last ran the council we built up over £100m in reserves, through proper investment this enabled Crawley to finance services most towns could only dream of. Regaining control in 2014 we found that despite eight years’ of cuts, much of the council’s reserves had been spent or were committed to projects so far
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On 27th February 1900, 129 delegates met in a hall on Farringdon Street. They represented organisations from the Social Democratic Federation on the far Left to several Liberal MPs on the relative Right, with over 70 socialist societies and trade unions falling somewhere between. From that meeting the Labour Party grew, born of a spectrum
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Labour regained control of Crawley Borough Council on a platform of homes, jobs and the community. I continue to believe that these areas should be our primary focus of attention, at a time when resources are limited it is vital that we focus on those things which stand to offer the greatest positive impact upon
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Fracking for shale gas has been controversial since the first attempts to introduce it to the UK a decade ago. You may recall 2013 protests down the road in Balcombe, when plans to frack next to Ardingly Reservoir met considerable local opposition. Last week the Government warned that if councils didn’t process fracking applications more
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Last month Crawley Borough Council voted to condemn David Cameron for breaking his pre-election commitments on tax credits, something which will have a huge impact upon the finances of thousands of working families here in Crawley, changes which Crawley’s Tories wanted it on the record that they support. Too often I’ve heard it said politicians
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A little over a year ago, Labour regained control of Crawley Borough Council following eight years’ of increasingly chaotic Conservative administration. By the time of the election key policies such as the Local Plan had stalled, there was a blank sheet of paper where we needed a town centre regeneration strategy and the height of
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Following the election, the Conservatives proposed various amendments to the Hunting Act which would make the ban on foxhunting impossible to administer. Last week they were forced to postpone that decision after it became clear they couldn’t win a vote in the House of Commons. Foxhunting is a divisive issue, not for the UK population—80%
Peter Lamb for Crawley 