Last week saw West Sussex County Council passing its annual budget for the year ahead.  Increased funding was provided for vital day-to-day services, with sound financial management and intelligent investments being at the heart of it.  The County Council’s 2022/23 revenue budget is £648 million and the capital programme over the next four years will be £755 million of investment.

Adult Social Care needs are increasing with our aging population.  An additional £7.5 million is being provided to support changes in population and the increasing complexity of care.  There was also a total of £16.7 million to reflect the increase in costs, that includes inflation and the raised National Living Wage.

In Children’s Services, the budget saw additional investment of £2.7 million towards the increase in demand for services, £0.4 million for the in-house residential strategy, £1.8 million for the vital Fostering Redesign which will help some of our most vulnerable children and £0.3 million for children’s emotional wellbeing and mental health services.

In Highways, an additional investment of £2.6 million of revenue funding was made, with £2.4m of funding specifically earmarked to address safety critical areas.  In addition to this, a further £21 million of capital funding will be invested in the road maintenance programme over five years.

This budget saw a further £1.3 million being invested Into Fire and Rescue, enabling the Fire Service to increase the number of immediate response weekend daytime appliances by 50%, resulting in even shorter response times to emergencies.  Major capital investment in the Fire Service was also agreed to build a new a ‘live-fire’ training centre and improvements to many Fire Stations, including Crawley.    

I was disappointed that all Labour and Liberal Democrat County Councillors voted directly against the County Council’s very sound budget, that was making no service cuts whatsoever.  I viewed this as them preferring to play last-minute political games, rather than making a sensible contribution to ensuring vital services are provided.  In very uncertain times, I do feel we need to put political games and petty party politics aside and ensure we get vital public services delivered without hindrance.      

Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group

9th March 2022