Crawley Down and Copthorne evenly split on breakaway plans

The consultation was held as part of a Community Governance Review after Mid Sussex District Council received a petition calling for Crawley Down to have its own village council.

Of the 250 accepted responses, 125 supported the idea of a split from Worth Parish Council, while 125 did not.

The results were discussed during a scrutiny committee meeting on Wednesday (May 25).

Draft recommendations from democratic services officers suggested things should stay as they are for now – though that could change depending on the outcome of a second consultation this summer.

They also suggested that the name of the parish council should be changed to Crawley Down and Copthorne Parish Council ‘to better reflect the joint and shared community identity’.

One of the issues raised during the meeting involved ‘allegations of scare tactics’ regarding the cost of a split.

Peter Chapman (Ind, Burgess Hill – Victoria) told the meeting that, while Worth Parish Council said the cost would be around £150,000, Crawley Down representatives thought it would be nearer £20,000.

Democratic services officer Terry Stanley said: “At an early stage of the second public consultation Worth Parish Council and the petitioners should supply to this review their assessment of these division costs with evidential annotations for each cost because we would like to see how they have been arrived at.”

To allow both sides time to put this together, the second consultation will start one week later than planned – June 13.

Mr Stanley added that it would be ‘really good to have better information in the public domain on which to consult’.

The second consultation will end in August and the results will be published on September 6.

Those results will be brought back to the council on September 14.

A total of 284 responses to the first consultation were received – 3.3 per cent of the electorate – though 34 were rejected ‘for undue brevity and providing nothing for us to consider’.

More than three-quarters of the Crawley Down respondents were in favour of the split while 98 per cent of those from Copthorne were opposed.

For or against the proposed changes? Email [email protected] with your thoughts.