Last Friday, the Full Council meeting of West Sussex County Council agreed a five-year plan of £676 million investment. In my West Sussex role as County Councillor for Tilgate and Furnace Green, I was very pleased to speak in support and to vote for this proposed investment, enabling it to become a reality, so that we can meet the challenges faced in Crawley and West Sussex in the future. One of these challenges is to meet the rising demand for school places, especially at primary school level. The County Council will be building the classrooms needed for an extra 1500 extra primary school places and 300 secondary school places, with scope to increase further should the need arise.
There is going to be substantial investment in Highways and Transport of £271 million which includes a huge sum for local highway maintenance, as well as £765,000 every year for new and the most modern and effective vehicles for the Fire Service, plus £350,000 for a major upgrade to Crawley Fire Station that will be taking place imminently. There will also be a limited and controlled amount of borrowing for invest-to-save initiatives and schemes to help generate income for the County Council, which has the beneficial effect of protecting services and Council Tax payers.
This was all welcomed by Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UKIP and Independent County Councillors at the meeting but sadly, there was one group of County Councillors who were hostile, that being Labour. Initially, that hostility to a Conservative Council investing strongly in Crawley and West Sussex was disguised, by the utterly bizarre spectacle of the Labour leader spending several tedious minutes reading out a fairy story that they had written, rather than discussing the very serious subject of the £676 million investment programme.
Disappointingly, their hostility saw the Labour County Councillors vote against the entire investment programme. Labour’s own publicity-seeking amendment on the investment programme was not supported by any other party, so out of the pram the toys went. Labour risked all this investment to chase cheap political headlines and they are doing Crawley residents a grave disservice.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Conservative Group
28th October 2015