Crawley has seen a 230% increase in people claiming unemployment benefits since the beginning of the pandemic.

It has been one of the worst affected areas due to flights being grounded at Gatwick with figures from January show 20% of Crawley’s workforce were on furlough.

To help the area recover the council plans to create a hub for digital innovation and green technology and earlier this month received £21 to invest in the plan.

One company which has moved to Crawley is ‘Naked Energy’. Its chief executive Christopher Williams says the company chose Crawley partly because of the number of specialist engineers in the area, many of whom had worked for US firm ‘Applied Materials’ before it pulled out of nearby Horsham in 2007.

He says the strong transport links, affordable rents and proximity to London make it a “very good, cost-effective engineering and innovation hub for us.”

You can read the BBC’s article on Crawley’s Green economy plan here.

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