Crawley belongs in West Sussex, not Surrey or London!

A 2022 map showing a potential future Greater London. 49 is Mole Valley. 47 is Reigate & Banstead. Both border London. 48 is Crawley. Moving Crawley into Surrey makes London expansion easier to take Crawley

In two-tier council areas like ours, local authorities are being forced by the Labour Government to merge to become a single-tier councils. An initial joint submission to the government was made by all eight councils in West Sussex, but an additional submission from Crawley Borough Council and Reigate & Banstead was sneaked in at the last minute, claiming a new single-tier council made up of these two councils was the best option.

That’s clearly ridiculous, including that the combined population of Crawley and Reigate is barely half the government’s required minimum population for all new single-tier councils. However, Crawley Labour are pushing joining Surrey hard, including a senior Labour councillor emailing all Crawley borough councillors insisting, “this is the obvious way forward” and “Let’s all get behind this option”.   

What might be the real agenda behind Crawley Labour trying to move Crawley northwards into Surrey? I have my concerns. The London Mayor, Labour’s Sadiq Khan, often makes statements about Gatwick Airport, which is not only outside London, but which has the additional Surrey/West Sussex county border further separating Gatwick from London, giving Crawley a strong second line of defence from being absorbed into Labour-dominated London. 

The secretive Crawley and Reigate submission repeatedly mentions London, and says “historic county boundaries are now illogical”. It references being “strongly connected to the London economy” and highlights railway links to London and the M25 and M23 motorways. Note that using the M23, the London/Surrey border near Coulsdon is only 12 miles from the Crawley/Surrey border at Junction 9.

Crucially, any new council with Crawley within Surrey will mean Crawley’s new council will border London! With London needing more housing, it’s easy to foresee Sadiq Khan and Crawley Labour then pressing for the London boundary to expand to absorb the new neighbouring council that includes Gatwick. 

One Labour Councillor in Crawley has already been letting his guard slip. At a seminar for Councillors on local government reorganisation held by Crawley Borough Council, when talking about the potential to join with Reigate and Banstead, one senior member of the Labour Cabinet said to everyone "We are all basically Londoners here in Crawley". 

Crawley has always proudly been part of our historic county of West Sussex. Our new single-tier council must remain within West Sussex and not move to Surrey, which feels like the first stage of an underhand two-stage plan to make Crawley and Gatwick part of a new London borough.               

The 2020s - This is Britain's Lost Decade

We are just past halfway through the 2020s and unfortunately it really is starting to look like the 2020s will become regarded as the UK’s Lost Decade. The term was coined in Japan throughout the 1990s when economic growth stalled, although their economic backdrop was deflationary while ours is inflationary.

This week is the fifth anniversary since the Covid Lockdown started. It’s a reminder that the 2020s started in the worst possible way, with the first two years very economically and fiscally damaging. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 then caused the energy and inflation spike that made everyone worse off.

Rishi Sunak’s government had started to turn things around but unfortunately the recovery in the nation’s fortunes has been totally snuffed out by the actions of the Labour Government.

Business confidence has fallen through the floor and a halving of the UK's official growth forecast to just 1% has been made. Labour mortgaged our futures on economic growth, claiming it was their number one mission, but our economy shrank in January and Labour are failing badly.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report ahead of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement made for very sobering reading. Their headline statement says that: “While on average all families are forecast to see a fall in living standards this Government, families on the lowest incomes are set to bear the brunt of the pain.”

Their introduction statement really is a grim read: “By April 2025, families will not have recovered from the double hit of the pandemic and cost- of-living crisis, but the latest official forecasts imply there is even worse to come. We estimate that average household disposable incomes after housing costs will remain £400 a year below 2020 levels in April 2025. By April 2030 households will be a further £1,400 worse off on average than they are today, a 3% fall. The past year may in fact prove to be the high point for living standards this parliament.”

When you think this parliament will last until 2029, that last sentence will make alarming reading for many Crawley residents. This is indeed our lost decade.   

Stopping free speech in pubs is ridiculous

Our traditional British pub is under threat. Adding to existing pressures, from April they will have the added costs of increased employers National Insurance rising from 13.8% to 15% and the lowering of the threshold it is paid from £9,100 to £5,000.

Sadly, pubs are closing down every week across our country. The data I’ve seen says that in 2024, an average of just over one pub per day closed down in England and Wales, with the number of pubs falling below 39,000 for the first time. I’ve noticed we have less neighbourhood pubs in Crawley than we used to.

We can’t take our pubs for granted and even if the Labour Government won’t do anything to support them, they could at least try to stop making life more difficult for them. Regrettably, they’ve now done exactly that as their MPs voted last week for a controversial new bill that could see an end to banter in pubs.

A small clause in the Employment Rights Bill could have a devastating effect on the free speech we did take for granted, as bar staff will be forced to police casual conversations and jokes. Clause 18 of the Bill demands “reasonable steps” by staff to prevent harassment of protected characteristics by customers. While of course no one wants any harassment, this could easily mean that anyone in a pub making a joke among friends could be in breach of the law and staff would be responsible for reporting it. I want our police focussing on real crime and not having to spend time processing reports of ‘John down the pub telling a bad joke’,

Now I know the Labour Party are a pretty miserable bunch, but must they really make Crawley pub goers and staff worry about what people say to each other in conversation while unwinding in the pub? If people can’t relax and speak freely in pubs, then they may stay home where Labour haven’t (yet) curtailed free speech. This Clause 18 needs revoking or revising. We don’t need any more reasons why people might not visit their local pub.