Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans the Government has to meet the demand for school places in Crawley.

Local authorities are responsible for planning and securing sufficient school places in their area, and supporting them in doing so is one of this Government’s top priorities. We allocate basic need funding to local authorities to help create new school places where they are needed. West Sussex has been allocated £57 million of basic need funding for the period 2015-18. West Sussex also received £113 million between 2011 and 2015, helping to create 8,565 new school places between 2010 and 2014. In addition to this, the Gatwick School, an all-through free school that opened in September 2014, is due to provide 1,020 additional places once at full capacity.

Information on basic need allocations can be found online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basic-need-allocations-2015-to-2018