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Welcome to
Crawley
West Sussex - England
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A Brief Resume
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Leisure facilities abound including 2 Leisure Centres, which are owned by the Council but managed by outside contractors, These are looking
very dilapidated now as the management contract draws to an end.
The Council has done a deal with the County Council Education Dept. to build a new ‘shared’ fitness facility on the school field at Thomas Bennett
- the old site will be sold off to finance the ever increasing debts of past extravagances. There are numerous, expensive private health clubs.
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Parks and open spaces are generally clean and tidy with designated play areas with safety surfaces for the kids. There seem to be hundreds of
football pitches, not a few cricket pitches and some bowls rinks. On the minus side the council are rapidly finding other uses for this land, development by favoured suppliers is quite common. Some areas
have been known to be ‘neglected’ then pronounced as ‘too far gone to recover’ so that they should be developed to save money..
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Fast rail links to London and the coast, the proximity of the airport and the M23 make Crawley the ideal location for basing your company. There are 10’s of thousands of
square meters of empty office space at incredible prices (some now quote costs as per person per day to make it sound cheaper!) Warehouse and factory space is also available but you had better be quick,
they keep knocking them down to build empty offices. Developers and the local authority are banking on a 2nd runway at Gatwick to put more money in their pockets, and more menial jobs for the people of
Crawley.
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Education in Crawley leaves a lot to be desired. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the kids, per se. They are as intelligent as their
parents and their parents parents. They have been let down by successive governments over the last 30 years or so and a County Council that prefers to follow fads without question.
West Sussex County Council Education Dept. does not figure highly in the national tables of educational excellence and unfortunately the Crawley schools do not rate very
highly in the West Sussex tables.
However, WSCC Edu dept., are ahead of the game, as always! The reason for poor standards in the county in general and Crawley in particular is nothing to do with poor
teaching (whether this be due to poor initial levels of education in the teachers of today, or poor teacher training or just poor selection of teachers, is not for me to say), it is not related to
indifferent management or lack of funding! Nope, it is purely due to the buildings! Knock down the existing buildings, farm out the building of new buildings AND hand over the management to a private
company AND all will be resolved! The band played believe it if you like!
Please don’t tell the likes of Harrow, Eton, Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester, Manchester etc. about this, they might start turning out well educated kids as well!
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Shopping is not much fun in Crawley - you have to pay to park everywhere, more and more shops seem to be owned by the same company and offer very similar products, the
prices are high. It is cheaper to do your food shopping at branch of a supermarket 12 miles away than it is to do it at the local branch.
The policy of encouraging the major retail players has virtually killed off the small trader, variety is very difficult to find.
The constant need felt by the elected members to attract money to their pockets (corporate not personal) has seen them adopt every ‘ideal shopping’ method known to
planners.
We have ‘enjoyed’ neighbourhood centric shopping where all the daily needs were available within the residential neighbourhoods.
We have delighted in the experience of ‘edge of town’ shopping, neatly killing off many of the little local shops on the neighbourhood parades. These parades now have many
dilapidated, empty shops and others struggling for survival.
On September 1st 2003 Crawley moves forwards/backwards into the ‘new’ town centre centric shopping mode. Yep, Wally’s World arrived in Crawley! Publicity shows this to
be the ‘mothership’, the biggest Asda store in the area/country? It is often suggested that the Wally’s World slogan is ‘meet them, meet them, beat them!’ so shopping in Crawley might be a little tiring
for a while as people wander between the ‘big boys’ seeing who has knocked a couple of pence off here or there. Maybe the bosses of the various outlets will meet at one of the expensive health clubs and
carve it up. The little guys will be battling to survive, many will go to the wall and more shops will be empty and ready for future development - Thanks, again, Crawley Borough Council!
Could that be the plan? Kill off the small traders in the town and redevelop their old premises? After all CBC do hold a lot of the leases - just a thought, watch this
space or just wait and see.
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The Honourable ‘Minister for Everything’ has great plans for ‘affordable’ housing. It won’t happen in Crawley, unless it is ‘affordable’ by the well heeled or ‘buy to let’
brigade. I looked at houses on a well known estate a few years ago, the rooms were so small that the inside doors had been left off, to hide the fact that, with furniture in place the doors would be
very difficult to open.
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Crawley is a boom town? That depends on your position - if you are an employer then there are loads of Temp agencies to supply you with cheap labour. If you already have
property then house prices are soaring. If you are just starting out? Forget it and get outta town fast, you will wait forever for a council house and have little hope of saving for a place of your own
with the private rents being charged
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