St Helens Regeneration & Investment Briefing

Funding, places and delivery. A briefing for the organisations bringing forward homes and regeneration across St Helens, Earlestown, Newton-le-Willows and the wider borough.

Dates and decisions to watch

Figures in this briefing cover different programmes, geographies and periods. They should not be added into a single borough investment total.

Regional routes and local routes

Regional routes: see regions/liverpool-city-region.md for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority's integrated settlement, Brownfield Land Fund, LCR Housing Pipeline, SAHP strategic priorities, the SAHP first-wave regional estimate (MHCLG's published £380m / c.3,100 homes), Spatial Development Strategy and the North-West Construction Technical Excellence College.

The table below names the actual bodies a St Helens scheme promoter deals with.

Who decides what (decisions and public contacts)

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank — SAHP funding and finance decisions.
2. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority — Brownfield Land Fund, Housing Investment Fund, SAHP strategic priorities, Spatial Development Strategy.
3. St Helens Borough Council — Local Plan, planning decisions, council land; accountable body for Pride in Place and the Impact Fund; joint-venture partner at Parkside. [1,7]
4. English Cities Fund (ECF) — joint venture of Homes England, Legal & General and Muse Places; master developer for the town centre and Earlestown masterplans. [9]
5. Neighbourhood boards — Newton-le-Willows (chair Chris Hickey) and Town Centre East & Fingerpost (chair Mike Denning) shape local Pride in Place plans; council remains accountable body. [2,4]
6. Scheme owner — the RP, council or developer delivering the individual scheme.

Public routes for the next conversation

A useful first enquiry names the site, landowner, proposed use, delivery lead, funding gap and next decision.

Places and programmes

St Helens town centre masterplan — ECF, phase one on site

St Helens Borough Council and the English Cities Fund (ECF) — the joint venture between Homes England, Legal & General and Muse Places — are delivering a masterplan for the town centre, with the Masterplan Development Framework adopted by Cabinet in February 2022 and hybrid planning permission for phase one granted by the planning committee in September 2022. [9,11,12]

Phase one (Phase 1A) is consented and in construction. Reserved matters application P/2023/0685/RES was approved by the council in September 2025, with a Phase 1 gross development value of £23.2m within a c.£100m overall masterplan. [29]

Contractor and money. VINCI Building is main contractor, appointed by the council and ECF, having already held the £7.5m demolition contract for the former Hardshaw Centre. A funding injection of £69.7m was signed off in December 2025, allowing VINCI to move from demolition and remediation into full construction in early 2026. The wider package is £69.2m from St Helens Borough Council plus government and ECF support, including two Town Deal grants totalling £10.49m and £812,000 from the One Public Estate Brownfield Land Release Fund. [29,31,32,33]

Live works on the ground in 2026: Hall Street drainage installation ran 9 February to 24 April 2026; highway works run from Monday 4 May 2026 to Friday 22 January 2027. [32]

The scheme's vision is a "healthier, happier, more connected town centre" built around the existing rail and bus links and civic core. [9]

Earlestown town centre — Market Square and Town Hall

The Earlestown programme sits within the same ECF/council partnership and is backed by £20m from the government's Levelling Up Fund plus £8m council match funding. [6,13]

• Earlestown Town Hall (Grade II listed): full internal refurbishment and extension by HH Smith & Sons, due to complete summer 2026. [6]
• Market Square: new permanent market canopy and wider public realm works; construction began January 2026, timed so the market could continue trading through Christmas. [6]
• Queen Street highway works: phased from 1 June 2026 between Railway Street and Earle Street/Bridge Street — new accessible crossings, traffic calming, resurfacing, lighting and landscaping. [6]
• Wider masterplan uses include independent retail, civic/community space, mixed use, office space and links from Market Square to Earlestown rail station. [9]

Parkside — employment-led regeneration, Newton-le-Willows

Parkside is a joint venture between St Helens Borough Council and Langtree, redeveloping the c.500-acre former Parkside Colliery site on the south-east edge of Newton-le-Willows, within the Liverpool City Region Freeport. [7,14]

Parkside is a logistics/advanced-manufacturing employment scheme, not a housing scheme; it is included here because it is one of the borough's four largest live regeneration programmes and shapes labour and infrastructure demand.

Cowley Hill — Glass Futures Global Centre of Excellence

On the former United Glass site at Cowley Hill, Glass Futures has opened a £54m research and technology centre to help decarbonise the global glass industry, including an experimental furnace capable of melting up to 30 tonnes of glass a day. [15]

Partners: Glass Futures, LCRCA, UKRI and St Helens Borough Council. The Prime Minister visited the facility during its development. [15,16]

Pride in Place: two neighbourhoods, two boards

St Helens Borough holds three separate Pride in Place allocations, which should be kept apart rather than summed: £20m over 10 years for Newton-le-Willows (Programme Fund, phase 1, secured spring 2024); up to £20m over 10 years for Town Centre East & Fingerpost (Programme Fund, phase 2); and £1.5m from the Pride in Place Impact Fund (£750,000 determined 29 September 2025 and £750,000 determined 8 April 2026). A previously stated combined figure of £21.5m was wrong: it omitted the Newton-le-Willows phase 1 allocation entirely. [5,27,28]

Pride in Place Impact Fund — £1.5m

£1.5m split 50:50 across 2025/26 and 2026/27 — £750,000 in each year, confirmed against Annex A of both MHCLG grant determinations (signed 29 September 2025 and 8 April 2026), where the authority is listed as "St. Helens" — 100% capital funding. [27] Borough-wide; no St Helens-specific target wards found in published material. National guidance requires commitment by 31 March 2027. [5,18]

Bring a project that can be delivered

• Need, ownership and consent — who benefits, land control, delivery lead, consents and dependencies.
• Capital and continuing costs — works, contingency, asset owner, operating budget and maintenance.

Local investment and project calls

These are different programmes, different geographies and different periods; do not add them into a single borough total.

Homes, partners and local need

Local Plan

The current adopted plan is the St Helens Borough Local Plan up to 2037, adopted July 2022. Policy LPA04 was read first-hand from the adopted Written Statement: "In the period from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2037 a minimum of 10,206 net additional dwellings should be provided in the Borough of St Helens, at an average of at least 486 dwellings per annum." The plan's own annual figure is 486, not the c.471 simple average previously carried here. [19]

Affordable housing has a plan-based number too, and it is lower than most people assume. The St Helens SHMA Update 2018 identified a need for 1,987 affordable units between 2016 and 2033, an average of 117 a year. Extended across the plan period, the plan anticipates that about 2,457 of the 10,206 dwellings (24%) should be affordable, subject to viability. [19]

Policy LPC02 sets the mechanism. On open-market schemes of 10 units or more (or sites of 0.5 ha or more where the unit count is unknown): [19]

• at least 30% affordable on greenfield sites in Affordable Housing Zones 2 and 3; or
• at least 10% affordable on brownfield sites in Affordable Housing Zone 3;
• of whatever affordable housing is triggered, at least 10% of the overall number of homes should be affordable home ownership, with the remainder affordable rent;
• relaxation only on an independent site-specific viability appraisal plus a benefits test; off-site provision only where local need is insufficient or there are overriding benefits, with a commuted sum set by the Affordable Housing SPD.

Two related requirements sit in Policy LPC01 for greenfield sites of 25 dwellings or more: at least 20% of homes to Part M4(2) accessible and adaptable standards, at least 5% to Part M4(3)(2)(a) wheelchair-user adaptable standards, and, as a general guideline, at least 5% of market homes to be bungalows. [19]

Note the zone-based split: a brownfield scheme in Zone 1 or Zone 2 carries no LPC02 affordable requirement at all. Establish the site's Affordable Housing Zone (Figure 6.1 and Table 6.3 of the plan) before assuming a percentage.

The council is now preparing a new local plan under the Town and Country Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2026 (in force from 25 March 2026), which will run to 2044 and fold in the Minerals and Waste and Bold Forest Area Action Plan policies. Cabinet approved the new timetable on 3 June 2026, revoking the 2025–2028 Local Development Scheme: notice of intention to commence proposed for June 2026; scoping consultation August/September 2026; Gateway 1 self-assessment from October 2026; consultation on proposed content and evidence June–July 2027; Gateway 2 (Planning Inspectorate observations) November 2027; consultation on the proposed local plan April–June 2028. No submission or adoption date is yet published. [1]

Housing strategy

The council's housing strategy, under the vision "Quality and accessible homes for all", was adopted by Cabinet on 22 June 2022 and runs five years. It sets out the borough's housing needs and its commitment to building quality, accessible homes, with five key objectives: supporting the council's journey to net zero through housing supply; improving residents' health and wellbeing through safe, warm, digitally and socially connected housing; creating communities; providing supported and specialist housing; and improving and strengthening neighbourhoods. Torus was among the respondents supporting its vision and objectives. [20,34]

A borough-wide annual housebuilding or affordable-homes target expressed in the strategy itself remains not verified — the strategy document was not retrieved. In practice the numbers that bind are the Local Plan's: 486 dwellings a year overall and an anticipated 24% affordable across the plan period, against an assessed affordable need of 117 a year. [19]

Named RP schemes

Torus (parent of the former Helena Partnerships stock in St Helens) is a national SAHP strategic partner; partner status is national and does not by itself commit grant to a named St Helens scheme (see regional page, section 3). [8]

These are examples of documented local activity, not a complete provider list.

Delivery and procurement

St Helens Borough Council advertises tender opportunities through The Chest (https://www.the-chest.org.uk), the shared eProcurement portal — hosted on the Proactis ProContract platform — used by five of the six Liverpool City Region councils and by STAR Procurement member authorities; Liverpool City Council directs suppliers to ProContract rather than to the Chest portal. Registration is free and suppliers receive alerts on relevant opportunities. St Helens buys through STAR Procurement, the shared service; the published contact is procurement@star-procurement.gov.uk. [25]

Above-threshold notices also appear on Find a Tender (https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk). The council's "Become a supplier" page sets out its route in for new suppliers, and STAR Procurement's category management and social value commitments apply to St Helens contracts, including use of the Better Business Scorecard by local firms to evidence social value. [25]

Parkside's delivery team includes Langtree (developer, JV with the council), Spawforths (planning), Curtins (highways), Fletcher Rae (architects), TPM Landscape and Cundall (engineering/drainage), led by 4Ward. [14]

Skills and delivery capacity

The region's North-West Construction Technical Excellence College (CTEC) — one of ten selected nationally, hosted by Wigan & Leigh College with delivery partners Blackpool & The Fylde College and the East Lancashire Learning Group — covers the whole Liverpool City Region footprint, including St Helens, through its regional hub structure (see regional page, section 6). [26]

St Helens Chamber runs local business-support and social-value guidance for firms bidding into council and public-sector contracts, including help interpreting social value scoring in tender applications. [25] A St Helens-specific construction skills hub beyond the CTEC and LCRCA-wide provision (Construction Skills Service, Skills Bootcamps, LCR Careers Hub — see regional page) is not verified.

Sources

Research checked on 19 September 2026.

1. St Helens Borough Council, Cabinet 3 June 2026, "St Helens Borough Local Plan Timetable" · source
2. St Helens Borough Council, "Cabinet backs Newton-le-Willows Neighbourhood Board £1.5million investment in first Pride in Place projects" · source
3. St Helens Borough Council, "Community members sought to help shape future Town Centre East and Fingerpost" · source
4. St Helens Borough Council, Newton-le-Willows Neighbourhood Board agenda pack, 24 April 2026 · source
5. St Helens Borough Council, "Pride in Place programme to invest up to £21.5 million in St Helens Borough" · source
6. St Helens Borough Council, "Temporary road closures in Earlestown town centre as regeneration works reach next phase" · source
7. Place North West, "St Helens waves through 1.6m sq ft industrial" · source
8. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, regional routes page — regions/liverpool-city-region.md (Brownfield Land Fund investment criteria; SAHP strategic priorities) · source
9. English Cities Fund, "St Helens" · source
10. St Helens Borough Council, "How to get in touch with us" / housing options contact · source
11. St Helens Town Centre, "Phase One" · source
12. Insider Media, "Go ahead for St Helens town centre regeneration" · source
13. Muse, "Town centre transformations underway in St Helens and Earlestown" · source
14. Place North West, "Approval for £80m Parkside phase one" · source
15. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, "£54 million Glass Futures facility opens in St Helens" · source
16. St Helens Borough Council, "Prime Minister praises Glass Futures on visit to St Helens Borough" · source
17. Marie Rimmer MP, "Pride in Place board appointed, and first meeting held" · source
18. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund (PiPIF): Frequently asked questions · source
19. St Helens Borough Council, "St Helens Borough Local Plan up to 2037" (adopted Written Statement) · source
20. St Helens Borough Council, "New borough housing strategy envisions quality and accessible homes for all" · source
21. Watkin Jones, "Watkin Jones to develop 295 new homes in St Helens" · source
22. Torus Foundation, "Torus expands St Helens footprint with 83 new homes in Thatto Heath" · source
23. Torus, "Torus Mobilises Largest St Helens Site, Building 168 New Homes in Sutton" · source
24. Torus, "Torus Invests £17.2m into latest Site, Building 77 New St Helens Homes" · source
25. St Helens Borough Council, "Become a supplier" · source ; St Helens Chamber, "Does the Social Value section in that tender application leave you scratching your head?" · source
26. Wigan & Leigh College / North-West Construction Technical Excellence College — see regions/liverpool-city-region.md, section 6 · source
27. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund: grant determinations 2025 to 2026 (St. Helens £750,000; determination signed 29 September 2025) and 2026 to 2027 (St. Helens £750,000; signed 8 April 2026) · source · source
28. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme: phase 2 place selection methodology note (St. Helens: 1 neighbourhood, Town Centre East & Fingerpost) and delivery guidance (phase 2 Plan deadline 30 November 2026; 26 February 2027 applies to the 40 phase 2 boards named in March 2026 and Wales; phase 1 places have no plan deadline) · source · source
29. Place North West, "Go-ahead for ECF's £100m St Helens town centre reset", 3 September 2025 (reserved matters P/2023/0685/RES; Phase 1 GDV £23.2m; component schedule; VINCI; funding package) · source
30. St Helens Town Centre, "Phase 1A" (65 homes — 57 apartments and 8 townhouses; 120-bed Hampton by Hilton over five storeys; market hall; 400 sq m ground-floor retail; St Helens Transport Interchange; Masterplan adopted February 2022) · source
31. Construction Enquirer, "Vinci wins funding sign-off to begin main £70m St Helens rebuild", 9 December 2025 (£69.7m funding injection; move from demolition and remediation to full construction in early 2026) · source
32. St Helens Borough Council, "Temporary road closures as St Helens town centre regeneration programme continues to progress" (highway works from 4 May 2026 to 22 January 2027; VINCI Building as main contractor appointed by the council and ECF) · source
33. St Helens Borough Council, "Historic investment approval sets stage for delivery of St Helens Town Centre transformation" · source
34. St Helens Borough Council, Housing strategies, policies and consultations · source

Research notes

Verified against primary or near-primary sources: the Local Plan timetable and new-system milestones (council Cabinet report); Newton-le-Willows Year 1 Pride in Place spend and project names (council news/agenda pack); Earlestown Town Hall and Market Square works and dates (council news); Parkside phase one scale, investment and jobs, and outline/reserved-matters dates (Place North West, cross-checked against St Helens Chamber); Glass Futures funding split, floorspace and jobs (LCRCA news); St Helens town centre phase one components (project website).

Not verified / open:

• Pride in Place Impact Fund target wards/areas within St Helens are not published.
• Town Centre East & Fingerpost's Regeneration Plan, Investment Plan and any project call had not been published as at 19 September 2026 — the board had only just been recruited and held its first meeting (13 August 2026).
• A numerical housebuilding or affordable-homes target inside the Housing Strategy document itself. The strategy's adoption date (Cabinet, 22 June 2022) and five objectives are now confirmed, but the strategy PDF was not retrieved; searched again 19 September 2026 across sthelens.gov.uk/article/1880 and the council news service.
• A completion date for the town centre Phase 1A. Construction dates for the enabling and highway works are now published, but no building completion or opening date has been announced.
• No St Helens-specific brownfield fund allocation or UKSPF-successor award distinct from the Levelling Up Fund figure for Earlestown was identified in this research pass. (The Town Deal money in the town centre package — two grants totalling £10.49m — is now identified.)

Blocked / inaccessible URLs: liverpoolcityregion-ca.gov.uk Glass Futures "delivery underway" page (403, worked around via the "facility opens" release); sthelens.gov.uk housing strategy article (404, relied on search-result summary); the Local Plan Cabinet report PDF required local conversion (pdftotext) rather than direct WebFetch extraction.

Verification 19 Sep 2026

• Corrected: the "£21.5m total across the Pride in Place programme" figure was wrong and internally inconsistent with the table beneath it — it omitted Newton-le-Willows' £20m phase 1 allocation. Now stated as three separate allocations, not summed: £20m (Newton-le-Willows, phase 1), up to £20m (Town Centre East & Fingerpost, phase 2) and £1.5m (Impact Fund). [5,27,28]
• Upgraded to primary: the £1.5m Impact Fund and its 50:50 split are now cited to Annex A of both MHCLG grant determinations (the authority is listed as "St. Helens"; £750,000 signed 29 September 2025 and £750,000 signed 8 April 2026), rather than to council news. [27]
• Added, action-relevant: Town Centre East & Fingerpost is confirmed as St Helens' single phase 2 neighbourhood in the MHCLG place selection note, so its Pride in Place Plan is due to MHCLG by 30 November 2026 (boundary changes were due 17 July 2026), with £1.36m released on approval in FY 2027/28. The brief previously gave no deadline for this board. [28]
• Procurement corrected: "all six LCR councils use The Chest" is wrong — Liverpool City Council directs suppliers to Proactis ProContract, the platform The Chest is hosted on. St Helens' STAR Procurement contact (procurement@star-procurement.gov.uk) added.
• Re-confirmed unchanged: LCRCA SAHP priority places include St Helens Town and Earlestown — and also Bold Forest Garden Village, which was missing from the regional page's list of 13; Torus's status as a first-wave SAHP strategic partner (Torus62 Limited, 2,865 homes, £349.9m).
• Not re-tested this pass: the Local Plan housing requirement, the Housing Strategy target, and the town centre masterplan delivery update — all remain open as recorded above.

Verification pass 2, 19 Sep 2026

• Local Plan annual requirement corrected: 486, not 471. The adopted Written Statement was downloaded and read directly this pass. Policy LPA04 states a minimum of 10,206 net additional dwellings from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2037 "at an average of at least 486 dwellings per annum". The "c.471 a year on a simple average" previously carried here was a derived figure and was wrong; 486 × 21 = 10,206. The residual figures are also now carried: 7,132 dwellings 2021–2037, 446 a year annualised, 468 with a 5% buffer. Previously not verified. [19]
• Affordable housing policy added from the plan itself — the single biggest gap in the previous edition. Assessed need is 1,987 affordable units 2016–2033, 117 a year; the plan anticipates about 2,457 (24%) of the 10,206 will be affordable. Policy LPC02 applies to open-market schemes of 10 units or more (or 0.5 ha where units are unknown), requiring at least 30% on greenfield sites in Affordable Housing Zones 2 and 3 or 10% on brownfield sites in Zone 3, with at least 10% of the overall homes as affordable home ownership. A brownfield site in Zone 1 or 2 carries no LPC02 requirement. Also added: minimum densities of 40 dph in or adjacent to St Helens and Earlestown town centres and 30 dph elsewhere, and Policy LPC01's 20% M4(2), 5% M4(3)(2)(a) and 5%-bungalow requirements on greenfield sites of 25+ dwellings. [19]
• Housing strategy dated and described. Adopted by Cabinet on 22 June 2022 under the vision "Quality and accessible homes for all", with five objectives now listed. The 404 recorded in pass 1 was on the news article; the live route is the council's housing strategies page. A numerical target inside the strategy remains unverified. [20,34]
• Town centre phase one corrected and brought up to date. Phase 1A has reserved matters consent P/2023/0685/RES, approved September 2025, Phase 1 GDV £23.2m within a c.£100m masterplan. The hotel is a 120-bed Hampton by Hilton over five storeys, not the "150-bed, six-storey hotel" previously carried. The market hall is 22,400 sq ft; retail is 11,400 sq ft including 400 sq m at ground floor; the office block is 75,000 sq ft over five storeys; homes are 64 in the consent (the project website says 65). VINCI Building is main contractor, having also held the £7.5m Hardshaw Centre demolition contract. A £69.7m funding sign-off in December 2025 moved the job from demolition into full construction in early 2026; the package includes two Town Deal grants totalling £10.49m and £812,000 of One Public Estate Brownfield Land Release Fund. Highway works run 4 May 2026 to 22 January 2027. Previously listed as "a 2026 delivery update was not located". [29,30,31,32,33]
• Re-confirmed unchanged: the three separate Pride in Place allocations, kept unsummed; the Impact Fund at £750,000 in each determination under the spelling "St. Helens"; the 30 November 2026 phase 2 plan deadline; the Local Plan timetable approved by Cabinet on 3 June 2026; Parkside phase one and phase two; the Glass Futures funding split; Torus's first-wave partner status.
• Still open: Impact Fund target wards; Town Centre East & Fingerpost's plan and any project call; a numerical target inside the Housing Strategy; a completion date for Phase 1A.

Business directory: not compiled for this edition.

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