1 April 2012
St Helens Green Party is to field candidates borough-wide in the forthcoming local elections.
And the party is pledging sweeping changes in St Helens to re-build the local economy, regenerate town centres, fight fuel poverty, defend and improve public services, and restore faith in local democracy.
Greens will work with public and private partners, co-operatives and communities to find new ways to put the heart back into the high street, and new ways to encourage genuinely local businesses and the jobs with them. 
St Helens Green Party will focus its efforts on re-building the battered local economyand helping people train for the jobs of the future. In addition, the party pledges to introduce large-scale, job-creating programmes, such as home insulation, that fight fuel poverty and cut carbon.
Greens will also work to create a local environment that really is cleaner, greener and safer. The party will raise minimum standards by taking a zero tolerance approach to litter and dog fouling, and enhance what’s on offer for people of all ages in local parks and countryside.
Green Party Eccleston candidate Francis Williams says:
“It’s time for change, time for a fresh start. It’s time for us to stand up for St Helens because the main parties seem to be content with second best.
“Our borough has a proud past, but it needs an exciting future. We need practical solutions to the familiar problems we face time and time again – not just excuses and no action.
“We need a borough where people and communities really do come first – not giant political parties or self-serving individuals.”
A Green council will fight harder to protect the founding principles of the NHS – fight for a health service that is publicly funded and publicly run. It will protect and improve other public services too – not privatise them or scrap them.
Francis Williams adds:
“Public services are under attack. We will defend them. St Helens needs fire fighters and police officers on the frontline, not the breadline.
“We will defend the health service against the creeping privatisation that began under Labour and has continued under the Tories and Lib-Dems.
"Likewise, we will work to improve social housing and widen choice, not sell it off.
“We will also campaign for real investment in public transport in St Helens and across the region. A Green council will say ‘no’ to the government’s wasteful and environmentally damaging plans for high speed rail, and ‘yes’ to transport improvements that benefit local people, businesses and communities here and now.
“The Green Party can make a difference.”
St Helens Greens will also take a fresh approach to politics itself and try to restore a local democracy that has become discredited.
The party aims to reform the council’s expenses and allowances system, make it clear how much each councillor earns through being on the council, and promises more open and accessible local government.
St Helens Green Party RSS Feed