Last Friday the Annual Council meeting at West Sussex County Council took place.  A new coalition administration was formed, comprising of a Liberal Democrat Leader and a mixed cabinet of Liberal Democrat and Green councillors.  This will be the administration that sees the County Council through to its end in April 2028, when a new Unitary Authority will take over.

I hope the new administration do well and does a good job, but I note a chronic lack of experience in the new cabinet.  By my reckoning, only the Leader of the new cabinet has served a full term as a county councillor, with the rest either being brand new or having been elected in by-elections a year ago.  As we go through the disruption to change to unitary local government, this may become noticeable.

While many people will note this will be the first time in very many years that West Sussex County Council will not be Conservative-run and will be run by left-of-centre parties, they may not have noticed that this will also be the first time in many years that no County Councillors from Crawley are members of the ruling cabinet.  Put simply, Crawley no longer has County Councillors at the heart of decision making in West Sussex.

But it’s even worse than that as with Crawley not having a single LibDem or Green councillor at any level, the ruling West Sussex cabinet made up of those parties not only has no members from Crawley, but it also has very little knowledge of Crawley.

Even worse for Crawley, eight of our nine County Councillors are now from the far-right Reform UK party.  All new without any councillor experience, I very much doubt the routine work of fairly supporting and representing residents will be a priority.  Boding badly, two of the eight didn’t turn up last Friday.   

It saddens me to say I have never known such a time when Crawley feels so poorly represented, and it will be like this for two years, proving that short-term national protest votes come with longer-term local consequences. 

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

27th May 2026