I hope everyone has been having a good Christmas and I wish you a very happy new year, and I hope a prosperous one too.  Naturally, I want our town and its residents to prosper throughout 2025, but sadly this feels less likely this year than in previous years.  For 2025, I think personal resilience and support for each other are going to be important for what is looking like another challenging year in a challenging decade.

Economic indicators are showing gathering storm clouds, with Labour’s disastrous budget last autumn being a major factor.  I am concerned to see that Boxing Day sales footfall was reported as being significantly down from 2023, both on high streets and in shopping centres.  This is a strong signal of falling consumer confidence and follows on from the negative economic data that we’ve seen growing since Labour’s budget on 30 October.

Revised figures published on 23 December showed that our economy has recorded no growth whatsoever in the quarter from July to September.  For the latest official data we have which is for the month of October, our economy shrank by 0.1%.  At the same time, we saw November’s inflation figure released which showed a rise to 2.6%, the second successive monthly rise. 

What is perhaps most concerning is the alarm bells that recruitment companies are sounding.  They reported a significant reduction in vacancies in November which has yet to feed through to official figures.  We do know that unemployment has been slowly climbing in the last few months and sadly, this trend may well accelerate in 2025. The second half of 2024 saw zero growth in our stock market and business confidence has been massively hit by Labour’s increase in National Insurance contributions, which will take effect from April. 

It is going to be a challenging year economically and probably in other ways too, but with expectations generally so low, 2025 could just surprise us and be better than expected.  The one thing I urge is to support and use local businesses, which is much better than missing them if they are gone.   

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

1st January 2024