The Government are making a dog’s breakfast out of the local government reorganisation they are imposing on us. Last week they commenced an additional short consultation on their revised proposals for West Sussex - proposals that not one local authority in the county had put forward.
This consultation runs until 15 June and I encourage anyone who cares about the future of our local government services, to take part. West Sussex County Council, Crawley Borough Council, and the six other district and borough councils in West Sussex had already agreed on two viable options to submit to the government and a public consultation was held on those two options.
Those two options were a whole county unitary, and splitting West Sussex into two, with Crawley being part of a northern unitary including Horsham district and Mid-Sussex district. Extensive work by councils working together was done on these two options, but the government has thrown that out, due to political influence from the Labour Council in Brighton and Hove, who came up with a scheme for the whole of Sussex, that suited them but no one else.
The government’s revised proposal for West Sussex is a version of Brighton’s proposal, that sees Chichester district added to Crawley, Horsham district and Mid-Sussex district. This leaves the proposed southern unitary authority of Arun district, Adur district and Worthing, financially unsustainable with a large demand for services but without the means to pay for them.
This could mean additional resources having to be put into the southern unitary authority during the costly and disruptive disaggregation process of splitting West Sussex County Council into two, and it is worth remembering the county council provide 80% of our local government services.
The evidence is very clear that one unitary authority for West Sussex saves £50 million a year within two years, with those savings being realised within two years, all with no expensive costs for taxpayers of splitting the county council into two. Any two-unitary option will take six years to break even and then save only £20 million a year. Let’s keep West Sussex together.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
20th May 2026
