Young people, rent costs and crime are topics raised at Crawley Question Time

The annual public meeting, which gives residents the chance to ask questions of councillors, police and health representatives, was held at the new town hall on Wednesday (March 15).

With around 80 people attending – the majority of whom had reached middle age and beyond – it was no surprise that the subject of youth engagement ran through many of the discussions.

Chief Inspector Ben Starns, of the Crawley Neighbourhood Policing Team said engagement with young people was his team’s biggest challenge at the moment and stressed the need for them to be encouraged to attend events such as public meetings to get their views across.

He wondered how many people at the meeting had invited a young person to join them. Very few hands were raised.

A council spokesman confirmed that the youth mayor had been invited to attend but had been unavailable.

Mr Starns spoke about the ‘pandemic legacy’ where youth services and things such as respite care ‘disappeared’.

He added: “Essentially our youth were just left unattended for a very long period of time.

“Those in more troubled houses were asked to basically leave the house and go out and, guess what, we saw an increase in anti-social behaviour.”

The issue of anti-social behaviour was raised by a Southgate resident who described problems with drug dealing being carried out in Hawth Wood.

The woman, who lives near the Arora Hotel, also complained about ‘constant noise’ from refugees – both children and adults – who were being sheltered at the hotel.

Describing disturbances until late at night as well as ‘spitting and all sorts of anti-social behaviour’, she also said the ‘wailing noise’ as people were called to prayer was ‘a row’.

While her choice of words did not go down well, prompting a heated exchange with others, Chief Inspector Starns said he would work with his team and liaise with the hotel to look at the problem.

Mr Starns told the meeting that the Home Office was responsible for deciding how long the refugee families would stay at the hotel.

He added: “The minute someone comes to this country, they deserve as many rights as I do.

“But I would also expect them to behave in the way that I would behave as well.”

As for crime in general, he told the meeting there were ‘more problems that I could ever solve’.

He added: “I have to prioritise policing. I only have finite resources and there will be things that I can’t solve.

“The community has an expectation of zero crime – that’s not physically possible.”

The cost of living was never far from people’s minds, in particular the council’s decision to raise council housing rents by 7 per cent and increase rents on garages and charges for the use of green garden waste bins.

Michael Jones, leader of the council, said the housing rent increase had been based on what the government said was ‘appropriate’.

He added: “Council houses still require repairs, they still all the things that have costs associated with it and 7 per cent is still substantially below the current rate of inflation.

“I would not want to put an increase on anything at the moment but unfortunately we have services to deliver and they don’t operate on fresh air.”

A question towards the end of the meeting prompted disbelieving laughter from one councillor.

One man declared that ‘political correctness, box ticking, GDPR, the woke agenda, all the over-zealous trans and LGBT stuff’ caused ‘social problems’ and ‘inhibited everybody from making proper decisions’.

He asked when ‘we’ would be ‘getting rid’ of all of the above to make life easier ‘by not having to follow this protocol nonsense and just bring back pragmatism, common sense and logic like we used to have’.

Throwing in a comment about ‘drag acts doing stuff in front of children’, he added: “There’s more serious things than going round to somebody’s house because they’ve made a comment on Facebook.”

When asked why he was laughing, Chris Mullins, cabinet member for wellbeing, said he found the comments ‘amazing’, adding: “Surely we can recognise one another as equal human beings.

“I’m pleased that this society has moved on so much. We ought to be proud of what we’ve achieved in bringing people together.”