Last week the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) published its final recommendations for its review of Crawley Borough Council’s wards. Following this, there will be a whole Council election in May 2019, with the Council then reverting back to its usual annual practice of electing a third of the Council from 2020.

Good leadership requires a broad range of skills including a balanced and measured approach when seeking to represent everyone fairly. For Crawley Borough Council, effective leadership should include having constructive engagement with partner organisation such as Crawley Police and West Sussex County Council, not trolling them both on Twitter to try and make yourself look good to advance your ambitions to become an MP, which sadly is the case with Crawley’s current Council leader. Regrettably, he has also publicly talked down our local schools which is something I will never do.

Last Friday I was very pleased to visit Thomas Bennett Community College, along with Tilgate Councillor Francis Guidera and Crawley MP Henry Smith. Representatives from the Chelsea FC Academy who are linked to the school were there for the official opening for the newly resurfaced all-weather 3G pitch. This is another great facility that the school has, but schools are more than buildings and facilities.

Henry Smith MP would like to invite constituents across Crawley to visit an important exhibition which tells the story of the fight for women to have their say in Parliament.

Figures released show that unemployment has remained at its lowest rate in more than four decades. Meanwhile, youth unemployment has fallen to its lowest rate since records began.

Crawley MP and All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Blood Cancer Chair Henry Smith met with Anthony Nolan in Westminster to mark Blood Cancer Awareness Month this September and to celebrate the number of potential stem cell donors in Crawley on their register.

New figures show that some 48,000 more people in Crawley are now enrolled in a workplace pension.

Last year, Crawley Borough Council’s Labour Administration scrapped the Council’s long-standing programme to create additional on-street parking provision for Crawley streets where previous poor planning polices had led to a chronic shortage of residential parking. My Conservative colleagues and I strongly challenged this, but our budget amendment to keep the programme was narrowly defeated by Labour Councillors.

Henry Smith MP has welcomed new figures showing that there are some 47,330 fewer children in workless households in the south east of England since 2010.

Last week I explained how our County Council has hugely greater financial pressures than our Borough Council, in part because of the ever-rising demand for adult social care as life expectancy increases. By contrast, Crawley Borough Council is one of the wealthiest local authorities in England due to the historical sale of council housing which has generated tens of millions in reserves that are used to provide the Council with a very substantial income. This enabled it to allocate millions upfront for a new town hall to replace a building barely over 50 years old and I note that Crawley Borough Council has just reported a £300,000 annual budget underspend.