IMPROVING CRAWLEY’S BUSINESS DISTRICT

Crawley Town Centre BID was established by businesses to tackle four main priorities within the town centre – improving safety; enlivening the town; connecting the businesses together; and showcasing Crawley.

The overarching aim is to increase footfall into the town centre, creating a thriving centre where people want to be.

The BID has created many highly original events such as Creepy Crawley Month, which was a huge success, and in October 2022, the town saw footfall increase to higher levels than in 2019 pre-pandemic days.

The BID Ambassadors are extremely popular in the town with businesses and residents; they have recovered cover £60,000 worth of stolen merchandise. Acting as a deterrent has had a very positive impact on the town.

Make Music Day in 2022 was a collaboration of over 120 countries to bring places alive with music, and countless positive comments have been received such as “It made Crawley feel like a mini Glastonbury.”

Looking forward, the town will see a ‘Crawlifornia’, a three-month long programme of family friendly events and activities, such as bringing Broadway to Broadway, a fabulous pop up beach complete with deckchairs, beach hut and buckets and spades, a surf simulator, street acts, music and family workshops.

That event runs straight into ‘Creepy Crawley 2 – The Return’! With everything creepier and crawlier than last year, bringing back the very popular Ghost Tours, Raijin Stom, Any Witch

Way, a pop up pumpkin patch and of course CC, our giant eight-metre spider!

All of this is not cheap. Therefore, we are funded by 470 businesses in the town centre who pay an annual levy of 1.5% of the rateable value of their properties, and our aim is to return that many times over in increased footfall.

We are committed to reducing carbon within the town centre and the BID is currently looking at inventive ways to help improve the air quality in the town.

Crawley is gaining a reputation as the ‘place to be’, families are returning to the town centre and there is a general feeling of pride and enjoyment within Crawley.

Wendy Bell, BID Manager, Crawley Town Centre BID www.crawleytowncentrebid.co.uk

By Paul Rolfe, Associate Principal, Employers & Stakeholders Director, Sussex & Surrey Institute of Technology