I only need to speak to a few Crawley residents before the issue of neighbourhood parking comes up. Poor neighbourhood planning by Crawley Borough Council in the past with a lack of foresight about future car ownership laid the foundations for today’s problems in many Crawley streets, but more recent actions (and inaction) has only made the problem worse.
I support efforts for better and more environmentally friendly public transport, but I oppose polices that actively punish car ownership. People should be free to choose and the more attractive public transport is to use, the more that people will choose to leave their car at home. However, there needs to be somewhere near home to park your car in the first place in order to be able to make that choice.
I view the current Labour Administration at Crawley Town Hall as being anti-motorist. Their scrapping of Crawley’s programme to create additional on-street residential parking provision was a terrible decision. Many Crawley streets have much parking on pavements and grass verges because of a chronic lack of parking provision. Labour stopped the converting of muddy grass verges into parking bays, that addressed the problem of wrecked verges, mud everywhere, and pavements being blocked.
Labour’s current planning policies don’t have enough parking provision for new development, often adding to existing problems nearby as well as causing problems for those new homes. Some planning applications have been allowed with no car parking provision whatsoever. In responding to concerns raised by residents, Labour’s only ‘policy’ is to do absolutely nothing and blame others.
There is a better way. A future Conservative-led Crawley Borough Council will bring back Crawley’s programme to create additional on-street parking bays in the worst affected areas. We will look at rebuilding some of our aging garage blocks, with new garages that are large enough to actually fit your car into. We will also seek to amend planning polices to increase parking provision for new developments, and to stop too many HMOs (homes in multiple occupation) being concentrated in any one street, which is a frequent cause of parking stress.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Conservative Group
18th September 2019