In the first three months and one week of this year, Crawley’s rainfall for the year so far reached 400mm (16 inches).  This follows a very wet October to December, meaning we’ve had an unprecedented twice the average rainfall over the last six months.  This has had a major impact on the condition of road surfaces and the ability to make permanent repairs.

As a motorist myself who uses our local roads, I share the frustration of fellow drivers when having to avoid potholes.  Thankfully the ground is now finally starting to dry out, significantly reducing the number of new defects breaking out and enabling catch-up with the repairs backlog.

Improving our roads is a top priority for Conservative County Councillors in West Sussex.  In this new financial year, we are putting an additional £4.5 million of revenue funding into road maintenance and many more millions of capital funding into road resurfacing.  It was notable that Labour County Councillors didn’t support this at the budget meeting in February - they would rather sit around make political capital with silly stunts.  That’s Labour’s speciality here in Crawley, as cynically, it’s all about securing power with them.

An example of this was recent reporting of the Labour Borough Council leader dubiously claiming he was delivering £500,000 more money for the County Council that they should spend on fixing roads.  This was claimed due to Crawley Borough Council deciding to charge double council tax on our small number of empty homes and second homes.    

This policy is only enabled thanks to the Conservative government bringing in new legislation.  It is about incentivising the bringing back of empty homes into use, not about raising revenue.  This 500K claimed as being raised for WSCC is highly unlikely to be anything like that amount.  Omitted from all the shoddy reporting was that this policy only comes into effect from April 2025, so even if any significant extra money is raised, it couldn’t be used for well over a year - hardly addressing this year’s short-term extreme weather induced problems.  Same old Crawley Labour, cynically misrepresenting everything. 

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

18th April 2024