‘A complete failure’ and a ‘direct attack on municipal autonomy’: a week in local democracy
What will our local councillors be going on about this week?
This week, Merseyside’s world of democracy has got a little less local as Labour lovers (and detractors) the country over have descended on Liverpool for the annual party conference.
While we’ll be hanging around at one or two fringe events and reporting back on anything of interest that arises, we can be fairly confident Andy Burnham‘s ears could be burning away, having only recently bounced into Number 10, moved a bit of it about a bit, and spent a fair bit of time talking about changing lots of things, including more devolution.
The basic idea of that is to move decisions away from Westminster and closer to the places they affect, something we may well be hearing a fair bit more about this week with conference underway.
Sounds good for local democracy, doesn’t it? Except there are a few questions lurking underneath all that talk of devolution, including one being raised by Liverpool Community Independent councillors (formerly Liverpool Your Party) at Liverpool town hall on Wednesday, namely, what ‘local democracy’ means when you’ve got the prospect of one mayor making decisions that currently sit with elected councils and planning committees?
Cllr Lucy Williams and Cllr Alan Gibbons of Liverpool Community Independents. (Images: Liverpool Council)
Municipal autonomy
That is the issue being put forward by Cllrs Alan Gibbons and Lucy Williams this week, who have submitted a motion to Liverpool’s full council which raises concerns about proposals that could give the regional mayor greater powers over major planning developments.
Gibbons’ motion says the changes could allow a mayor and his officers to ‘completely overrule’ democratically elected local councils and planning committees, constituting a ‘direct attack on municipal autonomy and community representation’.
There are already significant changes to planning afoot anyway, not just across Merseyside but the whole country, which will mean more and more developments being decided by officers and less powers for local councillors to ‘call-in’ controversial projects to the planning committee. We may well hear a little more on what our representatives have to say about these changes, proposed and in process, later this week courtesy of Gibbons’ motion.
A single transferable vote
Meanwhile, Liverpool has plenty of other arguments to get through as its full cohort of councillors meet at the town hall for the first time since the summer.
Liberal councillor Steve Radford has also put forward a motion linked to Burnham’s views on things, and it is by far the most succinct of those up for discussion this week. Radford has asked the council to note simply ‘the election of Andrew Burnham as Labour Leader and his support for proportional representation’ followed by a question mark.
To be fair, he does also propose the council writes to the minister for electoral reform and local MPs to request ‘enhancing real voter power in every ward and a better plural and diverse representation across the council chamber’ by introducing a single transferable vote into next years’ council elections.
Liverpool Labour leader and council leader Liam Robinson has offered his own amendments to this, which water down the proposition a little to asking instead for a ‘National Commission on Electoral reform be held to examine different electoral systems for local, regional and national elections so that recommendations can be made to Parliament followed by the potential of a referendum for adoption.’ We’ll find out how all that goes down on Wednesday.
A ‘complete failure’
Liberal Democrat leader Carl Cashman and fellow councillor, and long-time thorn in Liverpool Labour’s side, Josie Mullen, also have some strong words for the council-owned company called Liverpool Foundation Homes.
Their motion describes it as nothing less than a ‘complete failure’ and questions the local authority’s financial management and value for council taxpayers’ money.
You may recall Liverpool Foundation Homes as one of the legacies of the Anderson years (Joe, not Jo) that didn’t quite turn out as was originally billed. The council launched the company in 2018 with an ambitious target of delivering 10,000 homes over a decade.
It delivered 18. There were 14 on Park Street in Dingle, which I wrote about for the Echo back in 2021, and four modular homes on Birchfield Street in Everton.
The council lent Liverpool Foundation Homes £1.7m to acquire the Park Street properties, but the history of the site was considerably more convoluted. FBM (UK) Ltd had acquired the land from the council for £1 in 2016. That company was linked to the Flanagan Group, which then obtained planning permission for 14 homes at the site. The council then acquired the homes in 2019, first buying them from FBM before selling them on to Liverpool Foundation Homes.
Liverpool Liberal democrat leader Cll Carl Cashman and Cllr Josie Mullen (Images: Liverpool Council)
Max Caller’s 2021 Best Value inspection raised serious concerns about the way the council had handled housing and property schemes, including the governance and financial arrangements around Liverpool Foundation Homes and the development of the Park Street homes.
A later review by the council found the 10,000-home target had been communicated before funding was secured, as well as there being a lack of robustness to the business case and delivery plan. The cabinet agreed in October 2022 to put Foundations into voluntary liquidation, saying it was no longer viable, setting aside up to £1.5m for the costs of winding it up.
Liverpool Foundation Homes is however still registered as an active company. A compulsory strike-off began in June this year but was discontinued in July, so it’s still very much hanging around. Another one to watch for Wednesdsy.
There’s lots more on the agenda besides, including motions on Palantir, the controversial ban on E-bikes on Merseyside trains and a couple relating to climate change and road safety, as well as the busses and more. There’s plenty to be discussed anyway, which should be keeping lord mayor Cllr William Shorthall busy as he oversees the whole thing. You can read the full agenda here.
Although Liverpool is particularly busy this week politically, what with the Labour Party conference in town and a full council to boot, it’s certainly not the only place the proceedings of local democracy are going down on Merseyside.
Around the boroughs
In Sefton, the Esplanade in Southport is back on the agenda, with a report being brought to the cabinet proposing a ‘competitive process’ to identify a partner to develop the former Park and Ride site, following the realisation there is wider market interest in the site.
You may recall our piece on the Esplanade in the midst of one of the summer heatwaves, exploring an earlier community wind turbine project on the site, which had been left somewhat upended by a company called GSL Developments being given an exclusivity agreement instead for a Cove resort project that had originally been touted for elsewhere in Southport.
Exclusivity?
The exclusivity agreement had expired in October 2025, although councillors weren’t told about this until the Monitor pointed out that the cabinet member had been incorrectly telling fellow councillors for months that it was still in place, a situation later blamed on a cut-and-paste ‘error’.
GSL are still very much in play in Sefton, of course, having recently been awarded a development agreement for the Sands site in Ainsdale. This led to a special scrutiny meeting being called in by the Sefton Lib Dems last month amid concerns over the scheme’s viability and questions around GSL, which only has a couple of quid in the bank according to its most recently filed accounts.
You may also recall we reported that one of the directors had encountered a few issues in a previous company that led to an FCA censure a few years back. You can get up to speed if you missed that one here:
Lisa Rand
The council report going before cabinet this weeks says the ‘breadth of interest‘ in the site now warrants a competitive process to see what else is out there. The Cove Resort and wind turbine remain among the options, with a future report to recommend an approach and potential ‘partner’.
A Green beach
On the Wirral, councillors are due to decide whether part of Hoylake Beach should be registered as a town or village green, following a review by an independent inspector.
It’s the latest chapter in a long-running saga over the beach and its vegetation, which has rumbled on since Wirral Council stopped its previous management regime, including raking and spraying to control vegetation on 2019.
That sparked years of controversy, claims and counter-claims over whether the beach should be maintained as a sandy amenity or allowed to develop more naturally. The council has since agreed a management plan which allows some vegetation clearance, particularly to maintain safe RNLI operations, while also retaining protected habitat, a compromise, of sorts.
Now the town or village green application adds another twist. To qualify as a village green, applicants have to demonstrate that a significant number of local inhabitants have used the land as a right for sports and pastimes for at least 20 years.
If registered, the land would the acquire legal protections as a village green, including protection against development that would interfere with its use for recreation. That decision is due at Thursday’s planning committee meeting and you can read more about it here.
Who’s listening?
Over in Knowsley, the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System Joint Health Scrutiny Committee is both a mouthful and due to meet in Huyton on Friday, with the future of Healthwatch on the agenda.
Healthwatch is a statutory organisation, created to give people a voice in how health and social care services are planned and delivered, providing an independent local service for patients and service users. (Full disclosure, Lisa, our editor, previously worked for Healthwatch Wirral, one of the local Healthwatch organisations in the region.)
In July 2025, the government announced plans to abolish Healthwatch England and the network of local Healthwatch organisations as part of wider NHS reform. The Health Bill would transfer Healthwatch England’s statutory functions to the Department of Health and Social Care, while the functions of local Healthwatch would move to integrated care boards (ICBs) and local authorities.
That legislation does still have to pass through parliament though, and the proposals have prompted concerns from a number of quarters about what could happen to the ‘local relationships and independent patient voice’ that Healthwatch has built up over more than a decade, particularly if those functions move into organisations responsible for planning and providing services themselves. We’ll be having a nose and report back any developments from that meeting.
A missing fountain, plus horses and carts
And, of course, we cannot forget about St Helens. Where to start? Well, today, we’d like to start outside the council chamber and with a bit of history, mainly because we’ve been very much enjoying getting to grips with a little independent magazine called Glass Eye and couldn’t resist telling you more.
Glass Eye’s most recent edition includes a tantalising look at what might have happened to a giant glass water feature that used to grace a St Helens town square. The latest edition isn’t online yet, but will be soon and sadly all the paper copies have also already been snatched up (one of them by me). But, if you want to check the back catalogue of Glass Eye out and show a little support for a fascinating, free, independent local ‘zine doing its thing up in St Helens, we highly recommend you do and you can do that here:
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Back in St Helens town hall, meanwhile, the latest episode of ‘Reform Meet Reality‘ has been in full swing as the council has had to walk back, and not for the first time, statements by politicians within the ruling Reform administration that overstepped what the council is actually doing. This one was to do with HMOs.
St Helens Star well and truly had the story on that one, fact-checking away after the leader Cllr Woodward incorrectly claimed at full council the local authority was launching a borough-wide HMO licensing scheme. The problem was the council has not actually built its evidence base for that yet, so the leader’s statements jumped ahead of what has to be a very rigorous evidence-led process, prompting the council to later clarify no decision had yet been made. Horses and carts flying about everywhere it seems, perhaps a bit of confusion amidst all the flags? You can read more about it all anyway here.
Some Monitor news
You may have noticed this is our first Sunday newsletter since the summer. Family, school holidays and the usual logistical acrobatics meant we took a bit of a break but we’re back now, and you may have spotted a few changes too.
First of all, we’ll start with the bad news. We’re really sorry but we’ve decided to abandon telling you about all the meetings coming up this week. It was very labour-intensive process and we couldn’t help but notice not many of you were clicking through to the meeting agendas themselves, so we figured you possibly didn’t particularly need or want the diary. This week we’ve given you a few selected highlights instead. If there’s popular demand, though, for the diary, we’ll reconsider, so do let us know if it was one for you.
The big positive change is that local journalists Ashish Prabhu and John Brace have hopped on board with their first contributions to the Monitor, for which we’re very grateful, and we may well have a few other new faces cropping up in the coming weeks too so watch this space.
Speaking of contributors, now feels like a good time to also give a shout out to Katerina Spathia, who has been helping out from afar and behind the scenes with a spot of editing and proofreading since we first set up the Monitor back in April, thank you for all your support. Our little crew is already growing now, all very exciting and we’re absolutely delighted Ashish, John and Katy have agreed to share their extensive experience and valuable time to help out.
You may also have spotted we’ve been doing a bit of live coverage of council meetings as well as our usual write-ups and longer explorations and investigations. While plenty of meetings are live-streamed these days, they aren’t always filmed and there’s also something about ‘being in the room’ that can’t quite be captured on video.
Not least, that is, you’d be missing some of the interesting artefacts lying around town hall buildings, like this hidden gem, which we spotted last week next to the water cooler in the ground floor committee room of Bootle town hall.
Besides, we also have to confess it’s always a bit of fun watching the slightly confused reactions of those not used to my furious typing skills while looking, probably a little too intently, around the meeting room (thanks to a past life as an audiotypist) so we’ll be continuing with that for the foreseeable when meetings aren’t available online or there’s some other particular public interest. If there’s one you’d specifically like covering on Merseyside, just give us a shout and we’ll try our best.
Leering at leaflets
One of the things people have been getting in touch about quite regularly recently is the contested contents of local political leaflets. Bold claims, strange claims, big claims, nonsense claims, we’re hearing it all. It’s given us an idea for an occasional spot in our Sunday newsletter. Seen a political leaflet you think needs fact-checking? Send it our way!
Also, and as ever, if you have spotted something your council is doing that deserves a closer look, please do tell us about it. Documents, agendas, minutes, FOIs and things that might otherwise disappear into local government undergrowth are particularly welcome, but also even if it’s just a thought, a concern or a gut instinct that something doesn’t make sense, just get in touch. We can’t promise we’ll write a story about everything, but we will take a look and come back to you at the very least.
It takes a community
It really does take a community to keep an eye on what our local authorities and local politicians are up to and it’s very much what we’re about too. Whether you’re keeping yourself abreast by reading our stories, helping out with information and insights, donating, or contributing in any other way, we consider you very much a part of the Mersey Monitor and our remit to keep the people of Merseyside informed about decisions being made in our names, and we’re very grateful for that.
The Monitor is still what it was when we started it a little less than six months ago - a small, independent, not-for-profit bit of public-interest journalism. These days, though, thankfully, the pesky feline reporters of our earlier editions (if you’re new here you’re not missing much honestly - just a few outrageous FOIs and a conspiracy about the Liver birds) now spend most of their time redecorating my furniture with their claws and hunting for bits of fluff instead. Most importantly, they are also finally starting to be replaced at the Monitor by a more human variety of journalist, so it’s all definitely a step in the right direction, we hope you agree and will continue to support what we’re doing here.
before you go…
There’s no paywall, no advertising and no corporate sponsor or wealthy backer waiting in the wings at the Monitor, but there is, unfortunately, no giant newsroom either. We’re all currently working for free and donating our time because we think it’s important to hold our local authorities to account. It does cost money though, and we can’t do it for free forever.
So, if you find what we’re doing useful, please support us if you’re able with a donation, details below. Every bit helps us keep doing the work and crucially keeps those pesky paywalls at bay. Public interest reporting in our view should be in the public domain, not locked away for those who can pay, so thank you for your contributions, they are very much helping the Monitor to keep it that way.
If you can‘t donate right now, fear not, please just enjoy our stories and, if you think they’re worth a share, we’d love it if you’d let someone else know what we’ve been looking at this week.
Ideas for stories we should be looking at? Drop us an email at themerseymonitor@outlook.com or message us on 07442 402 023.
*An earlier version of this article appeared to operating under the assumption most meetings were happening on Thursday when Liverpool full council is of course Wednesday. We’d like to blame the cats but this was a very human mix-up, we must have had Thursday on the brain. We’ve now updated accordingly.
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