Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to increase the number of school places in Crawley.

Local authorities are responsible for planning and securing sufficient school places in their area, and supporting them to do so is one of this Government’s top priorities. That is why we have committed to spending £7 billion on school places up to 2021, which along with our investment in the free schools programme we expect to deliver 600,000 new places.

Basic need funding is allocated to local authorities to help them to create new school places. West Sussex received £113 million of basic need funding between 2011 and 2015, which helped to create almost 10,000 new places between 2010 and 2015. These new places include over 1,000 provided by the Gatwick School, an all-through free school in Crawley.

West Sussex has also been allocated a further £85 million to create the places needed by 2019, including in Crawley.

Information on basic need allocations can be found on GOV.UK at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basic-need-allocations