Built in the heyday of social engineering after the second world war, the Sussex “new town” of Crawley is, like much of Britain, in need of a makeover.
Located close to Gatwick airport, Crawley is the engine room of the West Sussex economy, contributing nearly a quarter of the county’s output. It has mostly rebounded from a bleak pandemic when travel-linked businesses shut.
But for residents, many of them employed at the airport or the adjoining industrial park, the rising cost of living has shorn the benefits. Meanwhile, public services in the town of 120,000 are stretched and infrastructure is crumbling, most visibly on potholed roads.
If Labour is to win the landslide victory on July 4 that polls predict, it should win swing seats like Crawley, which it held from 1997 to 2010, with relative ease. In 2019, the Conservatives held the seat with a majority of 8,360.
But Labour is failing to inspire voters in Crawley. Expectation management by Sir Keir Starmer, the party’s leader, around the dire state of national finances and the time needed to get services back on their feet has had a dampening effect.
“There is a general feeling of disenchantment but also uncertainty about whether change will be for the better,” said Steve Sawyer, who runs the Manor Royal industrial estate, and who recently surveyed its 700 companies.
Most of the companies are feeling the squeeze: 64 per cent reported concerns over the rising cost of doing business, up from 48 per cent a year ago. Utility costs, rents and the consequences of Brexit have all contributed.
“When you’re in the mire you need someone to say: I know it’s tough but there is hope,” Sawyer said, lamenting the parties’ lack of a bolder plan to revive trade with Europe.
Crawley was particularly hard hit during the pandemic, when its economy contracted by 21 per cent. Much of that output has come back.
Footfall in the local shopping precincts hit 15mn last year, above pre-pandemic levels, and the Manor Royal industrial estate is at near capacity, Sawyer said, with a vacancy rate of 14 per cent compared with 40 per cent in 2010.
But the long hangover from former prime minister Liz Truss’s 2022 mini Budget, which sent markets reeling, has damped the sense of a recovery in the area.
“Life’s got better for some but it’s a Robin Hood-type world — better for the rich and worse for the poor,” said Laura-Jane Wainwright, whose own tale mirrors that of hard-working families she helps at a local food bank.
A former teacher married to a policeman, she set up FreeShop in 2020 after spiralling into debt herself, a result of private medical bills for her daughter for care she had been unable to access on the NHS.
FreeShop started out helping 70 families a week in the early days of the pandemic. In a reflection of the social crisis that forms the backdrop to these elections, it now helps 650 families.
“We get a lot of teachers, teaching assistants, nurses and care workers using the food bank — people doing vital jobs who can’t make ends meet,” she said.
One of the key pressures on residents has been housing costs due to a shortage of available stock and the spike in mortgage rates which followed the Truss mini Budget.
Average monthly rent in the town has gone up 9 per cent in the past year to £1,322 in April 2024, from £1,213 the year before, according to the ONS.
Michael Jones, Labour leader of Crawley borough council, said the benefits of the town’s recovery post-Covid were not trickling down. “It’s all swallowed up by the crippling increase in the cost of living,” he said.
“We are reaching the end of what we can do here,” he added. “The UK needs housebuilding and expenditure on infrastructure well outside the scale of anything a town like this can approach.”
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A uniting theme among Crawley’s residents is falling confidence in the Tory party’s ability to right the ship.
On the streets, it is hard to find anyone happy to reward the Conservatives, in power since 2010, with another term.
“They have run out of ideas,” said Paul Castle, who stood and lost as a Tory candidate in May’s local elections. He is now more impressed with the immigration curbs and tax cuts offered by Nigel Farage’s populist Reform party.
Voters who had supported the Tories in the past but were not going to this time, were more likely to abstain Castle thought. While he and others predicted a Labour win, he did so without excitement or confidence that the party had the answer for the economy.
“I actually believe [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak when he says the economy is coming back. But they have mucked up too much — after 14 years people are fed up,” he said.
“They say they have cut inflation, but they drove it up in the first place. They say they have put more police on the streets but they slashed the police force in the first place,” said Steve Leake, a Labour-voting engineer.
David Brown, a self-employed carpet fitter was more circumspect. He would “not trust the Tories with the economy”. But he was finding it hard to choose between the rest.
“We need to throw it all out and start again,” he said.
