The Crawley Borough Emergency Control Bunker is located in the basement of the Town Hall. It was constructed in 1979 with the aid of a grant from the Home Office. TheTimeChamber was kindly shown round by the current head of emergency planning for Crawley Borough Council. The blast door is extant and in the entrance area is a huge tiled decontamination suite. The standby generator still works and is tested and used regularly. It is used for emergency backup power for the council meeting rooms. It is the original unit and we were lucky enough to be shown it running.
In the main planning room there are maps still stuck on the wall marked out with various items from exercises. The bunker also hosts the Crawley shop watch radio network as well as a general emergency radio communications net in case of local emergency (flooding etc). The emergency exit is still visible hidden behind a small square blast door but it is blocked at the far end with a concrete plug.
