Crawley Development Corporation

The Corporation had the task of growing the ancient Sussex market town of Crawley from a population of 9,000[1] to 40,000 by the early 1960s, expanding its commercial and industrial base and developing a balanced, socially cohesive community.

Its assets passed to the Commission for New Towns in that year; they are now owned privately or by the local authority, Crawley Borough Council.

Wide-ranging powers were granted—from physically preparing the land to examining financial contracts—and in return the Corporation was expected to transform the 5,920-acre (2,400 ha) "designated area" into a viable regional centre and community.

The proceedings, on 4–6 November 1946 at Montefiore Hall in Three Bridges, held up the official New Town designation until 9 January 1947, and two further legal challenges meant no work could take place until December 1947.

In February 1947, shortly after the official designation of New Town status, the group was formalised and renamed Crawley Development Corporation.

[9] It had to "design, build and administer a self-contained industrial town of 50,000 within 15 years, and weld this on to the existing scattered haphazard development" around Ifield, Crawley and Three Bridges.

Within months, both men had left the Corporation: Lindsell was considered "not dynamic enough"[11] by Lewis Silkin, and Sharp resigned shortly after submitting his plan and some additional research.

[11] Anthony Minoprio was appointed as consultant planner instead; by June 1947 he had prepared a new draft plan (approved and published in December 1947)[13] and Silkin had taken on a new chairman, Thomas Bennett.

[2][13] Delays caused by materials shortages in the straitened postwar economy meant that the first two years of its existence were given over to planning, but work began in earnest in 1949.

Minoprio took charge of the detailed planning of the new town centre, to be based on the existing High Street, while responsibility for the other areas was devolved to Development Corporation staff.

[22] In the same year, work started on the sewerage system and New Town's industrial estate[11] (later named Manor Royal),[23] and the first residential street was built.

The Corporation looked at bids from 11 companies for the contract to lay out and build Smalls Mead, a street of terraced houses near Crawley Hospital.

A 100-acre (40 ha) site was designated, consisting of open fields off the Three Bridges Road and the ancient High Street at the west end.

It used its compulsory purchase powers to buy 76 shops and other buildings on and near the High Street in 1950 and immediately leased them back to their previous owners for 21 years.

[29] When land was bought east of the High Street in preparation for the new town centre, farmer James Lee took direct action: he built his activist profile by occupying and being evicted from several farms in quick succession,[29] then he became nationally famous for driving his tractor from Crawley to Buckingham Palace as a protest at being "cheated" by the Corporation.

[30] From the time it was established, one of Crawley Development Corporation's main aims was to house former Londoners who were moving to work in the New Town.

In a report that year, Lewis Silkin stated that East and West Sussex County Councils would have to make their own provision for housing for tenants on their waiting lists.

The inner neighbourhoods were West Green (built 1949–54), Northgate (1951–55), Three Bridges (1952–55) and Southgate (eastern part 1955–57; the western section was delayed until after the Development Corporation era).

[29][32] Land east of Tilgate that was designated in the master plan as "reserve residential"[41] was laid out with utilities from 1960; the Corporation had erected about 500 houses in the neighbourhood, named Furnace Green, by the time of its dissolution.

This needed to be done quickly to ensure varied employment was available for the thousands of new residents:[22] the government wanted people to live and work in Crawley rather than commuting out to London or elsewhere.

It tried to prevent any single trade becoming dominant, and was partly successful; but Crawley did develop into a centre for the electronics and engineering industries,[48] and by the late 1950s one in ten of the town's workers were employed by the A.P.V.

The site was close to the stations at Gatwick and Three Bridges; there was space for sidings and goods facilities; major roads were nearby; and the prevailing southwesterly winds would keep pollution away from residential areas.

[3] From the 1960s, these were exacerbated by competition from the reopened and greatly enlarged Gatwick Airport, which stood next to the industrial estate and which offered high wages for semi-skilled and unskilled jobs—a threat anticipated by Thomas Bennett in the 1950s.

[27] Crawley Development Corporation assumed responsibility for several public services in the town, and made an extensive study of its requirements in 1947–48.

[42] On 20 November 1948, the Ministry of Health designated the Corporation as a local water authority, and its chief engineer was put in charge of drainage provision.

Despite support from the Corporation and Crawley Urban District Council, the regional health authority decided that the existing hospital should be extended and modernised instead.

The layout of the urban area conforms closely to the master plan, and Crawley's continuing status as an important regional commercial and industrial centre is attributable to the work done by the Corporation in attracting outside firms and providing suitable sites for them.

The Corporation originally aimed to define a firm boundary for the urban area, preventing additional development and preserving the green belt[60] (whose extent was marked on the master plan).

[61] Since 1962, the original nine residential neighbourhoods have become 13 with the addition of Furnace Green, Broadfield, Bewbush and Maidenbower,[32] and the rapid growth of Gatwick Airport from the late 1950s meant that more land was needed for its dependent industries.

Its official heraldic description is "Or, on a fesse gules between three crows sable, three chevronels interlaced argent, all within a bordure azure charged with sixteen martles or".