Want a flag flying over the town hall? Make sure you write to the leader

Curious things coming out of St Helens cabinet this month.

Until this week, St Helens was one of many local authorities without a formal flag policy. That has now changed, following a meeting of the borough’s cabinet on Monday.

The cabinet, made up of mostly relatively newly elected Reform councillors, approved a policy creating what is described as a ’white list’ of flags that can routinely be flown from council buildings.

The list includes the Union Flag, the flags of the four nations, Lancashire, St Helens, St Helens RFC, various armed forces flags, Scouts, Girlguiding and Merchant Navy flags.

If your preferred flag isn’t on the list, don’t despair, simply write to council leader George Woodward, who will personally consider whether or not to grant each request.

This is because, under the new policy, it is the leader alone who has ‘sole discretion‘ over whether additional flags should be flown (apart from when there are national stipulations that override this).

Council leader Cllr Woodward described flags as ‘not just a piece of fabric flying in the wind, they actually mean something’, saying they represented ‘loyalty and allegiance’ and should therefore be treated with care.

Buried in the report, however, was a rather more cautious observation from officers. Approving some flags while refusing others, they warned, could create a risk of ‘indirect discrimination’, referring to the fact the LGBTQ+ flag, for example, has been flown in previous years - although this year things got more complicated.

That warning inevitably carries a little more weight given recent controversy surrounding the administration’s directions to ‘cease all engagement’ with Pride and Refugee Week, directions that actually translated into actions around social media, library displays and a reallocation of funds to other refugee support projects - and for which the council later confirmed to the Monitor it held no equality impact assessments, equality screening or formal decision records.

It will be interesting to see whether anyone decides to test the new St Helens flag system in any case by writing directly to the leader, and whether there will be any new or unusual flags flying in St Helens as a result.

Building homes is ‘draining the pot’

One of the afternoon’s most eye-catching claims came during discussion of the council’s financial outturn. Leader George Woodward argued many people mistakenly believed more housing meant more council tax income.

Instead, he said: ‘The more we build actually the more our finances are drained.’ It’s certainly a striking conclusion, although the report the cabinet was discussing doesn’t actually reach it.

The report does refer to increasing housing numbers creating cost and income pressures within neighbourhood and environmental services, particularly around recycling, but nowhere does it weigh those costs against the additional council tax revenue generated by new homes. Instead, the council’s biggest overspending pressures remain children’s and adult social care.

Which is it?

Curiously, the rest of cabinet appeared to be working from a rather different premise when it comes to the need for housing.

Another cabinet member update noted that demand for affordable housing continues to exceed supply, with little indication that the imbalance will improve in the near future. Is it possible house building could help? The position of the cabinet was unclear from the meeting.

A bit clearer though was that members also welcomed 79 households moving out of temporary accommodation, while acknowledging the wider housing pressures that remain.

HMOs: we’ll come back to this

On the subject of housing need, cabinet also celebrated progress towards introducing an Article 4 Direction restricting the development of houses in multiple occupation (HMOs). Members repeatedly described HMO growth as having ‘spiraled out of control’, with measures to tackle this one of the group’s key election promises, according to the leader.

We had hoped to have a little update on this claim HMOs are out of control in St Helens. We’ve been waiting several days now for a response from the press office, or you would likely have been reading about this cabinet meeting sooner.

However, it’s full council tonight and we’re fed up waiting so we’ve now decided to do a separate piece solely about HMOs in St Helens. Hopefully today is the day the Monitor gets an answer to our queries, please keep all your fingers and toes crossed for us.

Just looking at the report put before cabinet, however, the council’s own evidence appears rather more nuanced than the rhetoric suggests. It records a total of 106 licensed HMOs across the borough as of March 2026. There are approximately 81,000 dwellings in St Helens, according to 2025 government housing stock figures, meaning HMOs represent around an eighth of a per cent of the borough’s overall dwellings.

There have also been just five planning enforcement complaints over the past five years, and 21 housing standards complaints last year. The report also notes that planning applications for HMOs are relatively low in number, with most being approved. 

The report also makes clear that an Article 4 Direction would not prevent HMOs from being created. It would simply mean new small HMOs require planning permission, allowing the council to assess issues such as concentration, design, parking and residential amenity on a case-by-case basis. 

For the Reform councillors at this week’s cabinet meeting, however, this is about ‘giving residents a voice’. There will be a six week consultation on the proposal before it moves to next steps, which is to confirm the direction and notify the secretary of state, who has the power to modify or cancel the order. It can also be challenged at judicial review if the evidence base does not support the directive.

Not one to pass up the opportunity to make a political point, the leader also suggested some of the alleged spiraling of HMOs was a result of government policy. We’ll definitely be examining that statement too as part of our upcoming article.

Welcome to Marmot

Cabinet also celebrated St Helens’ ambition to become a Marmot borough.

The Marmot approach focuses on reducing health inequalities by tackling their root causes, including poverty, housing, education, employment and discrimination.

Councillor Eileen Fleming said she hoped it would help improve outcomes for residents in the borough, having pointed out a low healthy life expectancy as well as high levels of cardiovascular diseases and self harm levels, among issues faced by people living in St Helens.

Domestic abuse… and political prisoners

The meeting then took an unexpected turn. Discussing community safety, one cabinet performance report notes that repeat domestic abuse is often driven by a relatively small number of high-risk perpetrators and the complexity of supporting victims.

Responding to that discussion, the leader decided to refer to early release of violent and sexual offenders because of prison overcrowding before adding that this was done in his view in order to imprison ‘political prisoners based on speech offences’. The leader didn’t explain his comments further and the evidential basis for his statement remains unclear.

… and a fund by any other name

The council also welcome the renaming of the ward member grant scheme, to now be called the ‘councillor community fund’. It brings with it a few changes, including removing support for school governing bodies, which was described as ‘unaligned‘ with council priorities.

Each councillor has £2k to distribute to community projects within their ward, with applications open twice a year, much like the previous fund. The leader added it was a ‘brilliant initiative’.

If you want to catch up on the meeting for yourself, details are here.

before you go polish those flagpoles…

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