page_title: Public services in Crawley
section_title: Drainage and sewerage
hierarchical_section_title: Public services in Crawley / Drainage and sewerage
caption_attribution_description: Crawley Sewage Treatment Works, Rolls Farm, Radford Road, Tinsley Green, West Sussex, England. Photographed from a passing train.
context_page_description: Crawley, a postwar New Town and borough in the English county of West Sussex, has a wide range of public services funded by national government, West Sussex County Council, Crawley Borough Council and other public-sector bodies. Revenue to fund these services comes principally from Council Tax. Some of Crawley's utilities and infrastructure are provided by outside parties, such as utility companies and West Sussex County Council, rather than by the borough council. To help pay for improved infrastructure and service provision in proposed major residential developments such as Kilnwood Vale and the North East Sector, the borough council has stated that as part of the Crawley Local Plan it would require developers to pay a Community Infrastructure Levy.
  Originally a "quiet, prosperous area" with a population of a few thousand people, Crawley was selected as the site of a New Town under the provisions of the New Towns Act 1946. Crawley Development Corporation was formed in 1947 to establish, administer and control the town's development, including the provision of services.
context_section_description: Thames Water owns and operates Crawley Sewage Treatment Works (51.146372°N 0.156663°W), which is the company's largest facility outside London. It discharges into the Gatwick Stream, a tributary of the River Mole. A three-year, £28 million upgrade programme of three Thames Water sewage treatment works, including Crawley, took place between 2010 and 2013.  The company stated that upon completion of the work at Crawley, lower concentrations of nitrates would be released into the River Mole, a lower volume of solid waste would need to be removed by road, a higher maximum volume of sewage could be processed, and odour reduction would improve.
  Before the New Town was founded, drainage and sewerage provision in the Crawley area was haphazard.  The town spread across the border of three parishes, and there was little co-ordination.  Cesspits contaminated the wells which many people still used to get their water.  Although "a committee of townsfolk" was formed in 1874, it was almost immediately superseded by the Public Health Act 1875 which gave the Board of guardians the authority to carry out drainage work.  The whole of Crawley became part of Horsham Union in 1880, making administration easier, but their Board of guardians' drainage scheme of 1884 was opposed by townspeople, and it was several years before the situation was resolved. In about 1907, Horsham Rural District Council built a sewage works at County Oak near Lowfield Heath, just north of Crawley.  Sewage from Crawley was piped here in the pre-New Town era and in the early years of the New Town.
  Soon after its formation, Crawley Development Corporation bought land at Rolls Farm in Tinsley Green to build the new sewage works. This site was near the original Gatwick Airport railway station.  The low-lying land was marshy and poorly drained, but this improved when sewers were built to connect with the River Mole. Thomas Bennett, chairman of the Development Corporation, noted in his 1949 report that the "agreed purity standard" of sewage discharged into the River Mole was "among the best in England".  The activated sludge method was used to treat sewage before it was released. The Ministry of Health designated the Development Corporation as the sewerage authority for Crawley on 2 April 1948, and the new sewage works was approved on 30 September 1948. It opened in 1952 and was within the parish of Horley in Surrey before the county boundary was realigned.  It was expanded several times in the 1950s as the town grew; originally it was planned to serve 10,000 people, but the master plan proposed 50,000 by the early 1960s and by 1961 the population had already reached 54,000. The County Oak works, now inside the New Town designated area, was turned into a secondary pumping station which took in waste from the western neighbourhoods (Langley Green, Ifield and Gossops Green) and transferred it to the main works at Rolls Farm. Responsibility for the sewerage system passed to Crawley Urban District Council in 1961 and to Thames Water in 1974.
caption: Crawley Sewage Treatment Works
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