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Last week was the Budget Meeting of Crawley Borough Council. This is the sixth budget I have produced as council leader since Labour regained control of the council in 2014 and, despite years of cuts under the Conservatives, we have again produced a budget which avoids making any front-line cuts, which invests in affordable housing…
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After four months of rain, it would be tempting to think that now might be a good time to start building an ark. Of course, like any sort of project, when you do need an ark you really needed to have started building it a long time beforehand. There is almost no one serious left…
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Most people have probably heard of a King called Canute who tried to order the tide not to come in and got his feet wet, a tale usually told to warn people about their arrogance. There are a few problems with this story. The first is that it’s a legend rather than historical fact, the…
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A new Cabinet has been appointed at Crawley Borough Council. Following the death of former councillor Geraint Thomas in November, Councillor Peter Lamb, Leader of the Council, has chosen Councillor Gurinder Jhans as the new Cabinet member for Environmental Services and Sustainability. Councillor Jhans is believed to be the first Sikh to hold a Cabinet…
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Crawley Question Time is back for another year, giving residents an opportunity to ask questions about topics important to them. The annual event takes place from 7-9pm on Thursday 12 March at Crawley College in the town centre. Crawley Question Time takes the form of an independently-chaired general debate and discussion. There are no set…
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The UK has spent the last decade in a housing crisis. Since I became Leader of Crawley Borough Council in 2014, tackling this has been my top priority and we’ve made good progress: delivering hundreds of new affordable homes each year, while introducing the strongest local-connection requirements possible within current law. Despite all the hard…
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We are failing our children. Truth be told, that statement could be made of anything from climate change to trade policy, but in this case I’m referring to something more direct. Since 2010, the Government has regularly announced millions more for Education, but these announcements are typically less than inflation, require cuts to be made…
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With the Government’s constant cuts to local authority funding, council budgets have never been more stretched. Which is why one of the most agonising parts of my role is writing-off ‘irrecoverable debts’. A vast number of transactions are undertaken with the council over the course of a year and in a small number of cases…
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When I was at Holy Trinity, every year History and German students would have the chance to go on a school trip to Berlin, a city which as much as any other has the history of the past century written on its streets. As part of that trip we would be taken to visit the…
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Last Thursday marked 73 years since Crawley New Town was founded. In 1947, the post-war Labour Government which created our NHS decided Crawley would form part of their plan to end the UK’s housing crisis by becoming a New Town. It was an ambitious project, they wouldn’t just seek to create housing but to do…
Peter Lamb for Crawley 