Flintshire leader Dave Hughes eyes re-election at last AGM before polls
Councillor Dave Hughes will ask Flintshire County Council to back him as leader for another year on Tuesday, at the chamber’s last annual meeting before next May’s elections.
Cllr Hughes, who represents Llanfynydd, took over as Labour group leader in late 2024 after Ian Roberts stood down in the row over three-weekly bin collections. The annual meeting is at Tŷ Dewi Sant in Ewloe.
The chamber he leads has splintered. Labour holds 27 of 67 seats, well short of a majority. Ten different political groupings now sit on the council, and Labour governs through a coalition with the Independent group and the Eagle group.
Reform UK has emerged as a four-strong group at Flintshire. The opposition benches also include Flintshire People’s Voice with six members, the True Independents with ten, the Liberal Democrats with three, one Conservative and one non-aligned councillor.
The seat for Argoed and New Brighton is empty. It was held by the late Liberal Democrat Cllr Hilary McGuill, who served the ward since 1999. Cllr McGuill died on 11 April aged 76, and the seat will be decided in a by-election. Members will pay tribute to her at the start of the meeting.
If re-elected, Cllr Hughes will name his Cabinet immediately afterwards. His current team draws from Labour, the Eagles and the Independents, including deputy leaders Cllr Paul Johnson, who holds the finance and social value brief, and Cllr Richard Jones, who covers transformation, growth and place.
[Flintshire Council Leader – Councillor Dave Hughes]
The shape of Cabinet will also decide who chairs the council’s five scrutiny committees. Under Welsh local government rules, scrutiny chairs are allocated first to groups that hold Cabinet seats, then to groups outside the administration. None of that can be settled until the Cabinet is named.
Members will also choose between two rival plans for who sits on which committee. The officer version, Appendix 1a, divides the seats strictly in line with the size of each political group.
A second version, Appendix 1b, was put forward by Flintshire People’s Voice and is described in council papers as a ‘Group Leader Agreement inc Labour swaps’.
It shifts seats around to give the council’s non-aligned member and the empty Argoed and New Brighton seat places on the Community and Housing, Licensing, Grievance and Investigation and Disciplinary committees.
Gareth Owens, the council’s chief officer for governance, wrote in his report: ‘Both reflect the discussions at group leaders meeting and, whilst different, both are lawful.’
The proposed schedule of meetings for the year ahead, also up for approval, fixes the next council budget meeting for 23 February 2027. The local elections fall on Thursday 6 May 2027.
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