Organise an event

We welcome event organisers into our borough and have a number of parks, open spaces and venues available for hire.

The Events Safety Advisory Group (ESAG) exists to provide advice to event organisers on the standards we expect for events being organised in the borough.  The Group members are Council services including Licensing, Environmental Health, Trading Standards, Health and Safety, Highways, Parks Management, Community Safety along with emergency services Merseyside Police, Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service, North West Regional Ambulance Service and the local hospitals.

St.Helens Council have updated the ESAG policy, effective from 1st April 2025.  A copy of the policy document can be found here Event Safety Advisory Group Policy Document (PDF, 318 KB). 

A flowchart outlining of our ESAG processes can be found here. Event Planning Guidance Flowchart (PDF, 113 KB)

To organise an event in St Helens you will firstly need to complete the Event Notification form (Word doc, 71 KB) and an Event Risk Matrix form (Word doc, 76 KB) and return them to esag@sthelens.gov.uk. 

If your event is to take place on Council Land, please also complete a Hire of Land form. (PDF, 1 MB) and include parkevents@sthelens.gov.uk.

Once received, your event will be assessed and a decision made if it needs to be referred to ESAG. We will respond to you within 5 working days.

If your event is referred to ESAG you will need to provide some additional information. An Event Management Plan, Risk Assessment, Public Liability Insurance and a map/plan of the event site will need to be provided not later than 10 weeks prior to the event taking place. Helpful templates of the required documents can be found here. 

Please note that for events with attendances of less than 1,000 attendees, you will need to inform us a minimum of 3 months before your event takes place.

An event with an attendance of 1000 - 5,000 will require a minimum of 6 months notice before your event takes place.

For attendances over 5,000, a minimum 9 months notice is required.

The notification time frames are necessary to allow the services who may support your event to consider the information provided. Notification provided after these time periods may result in your event not being granted land hire permission if the event is on council land, and/or the required services may not be able to support you with the appropriate advice you may require.