WEST Sussex County Council Leader Henry Smith is backing a Crawley Borough Council motion to seek government funding to enable the building of a new fire station in the town to go-ahead as soon as possible.
He has written to John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, urging the Government to make West Sussex a special case for additional capital grant so the Fire Station can be built.
This echoes a motion passed last night (Wednesday December 16) by the Borough Council.
Henry’s letter to the Secretary of State said: “The recent local government grant settlement for West Sussex continues to remain at the minimum possible level, which in turn continues to have a serious impact on this County Council’s ability to fund infrastructure requirements.
“The continued low levels of grant settlement which this county has received over the last eight years is now having a detrimental effect on the county’s ability to replace an aging building stock, particularly amongst our Fire and Rescue Service infrastructure, much of which was built decades ago and is in now in need of replacement.
“By way of an example, we need to replace the existing Crawley Fire Station, which is obsolete, and to rebuild on a site that optimises our fire and rescue cover in the north of the county.”
Henry added today (Thursday December 17) that this was the second approach made to Government for funding saying:
“We previously asked the government for Public Finance Initiative funding to build the new Crawley Fire Station but this was rejected by the Minister,” he said.
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