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.
Labour’s justification was that Highways are a County Council statutory responsibility and therefore Crawley Borough Council should not be subsiding a WSCC function. Our view was that CBC should accept responsibility for its planning policies that contributed to Crawley’s parking problems, and that both Councils should work together in providing residential parking provision, especially with CBC being a wealthy local authority. Since then, Labour’s only ‘policy’ on parking has become “blame the Tories at the County Council”.
The issue of Council funding for non-statutory functions has come up again in relation to funding for housing support, with the County Council consulting on potentially withdrawing its discretionary housing support funding because of their severe financial pressures for its statutory functions of adult social care and caring for vulnerable children. Surprisingly, Crawley Borough Council (with statutory responsibility for homelessness) only funds Crawley Open House with £50,000 a year whereas West Sussex County Council (with no statutory housing responsibility) gives discretionary funding of £250,000 a year.
I’ve made it very clear that I want this County Council funding to continue and that both Councils should work together in tackling the very serious issue of homelessness. If WSCC does have to reduce its funding then wealthy CBC should step up and pay a fairer share and I pledge that under the Conservatives, they will.
All the local Councils in West Sussex (except Crawley) want the County Council to work with them on homelessness. Petulantly, Crawley’s Labour Leader is apparently withdrawing CBC’s cooperation with the County Council on tackling homelessness. I don’t know whether this is immaturity or pressure from the extremist Momentum wing of Labour, but like on parking provision, my view is consistent (unlike Crawley Labour) in that both Councils should work together in tackling homelessness.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
19th September 2018