09/06/2026
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Happy Valley Pride is disappointed with the decision made by Calderdale Council to remove the annual flying of the Progress Flag for Pride Month from Halifax Town Hall.
Following conversations last week with Cllr. Sarah Courtney, who is working hard to challenge this decision, we want to reach out to Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council to express the importance of our council showing its visible support towards the LGBTQIA+ community.
The LGBTQIA+ community continue to have to fight for equality in the UK, while being subjected to hate crimes, healthcare disparity, homelessness and bad mental health.
In the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, which evaluates the legal and policy landscape for LGBTQIA+ people across 49 European countries, the UK now ranks 22nd with an overall equality score of 44%. For four consecutive years, from 2012 to 2015, we were number one so support is needed more than ever. Pride is for everybody in the community to feel proud to live in a country that values and respects everyone equally.
The decision to not fly the Progress Flag is hurtful, scary, and upsetting for our community, because it resembles a threat to return to a UK that, not so long ago, saw homosexuality as a criminal act.
Happy Valley Pride believes that this vital symbol of progress towards LGBTQIA+ equality does not take away visibility from any other group of people in Calderdale. In fact, it resembles equality for all of us in the community. We know that Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council believes that everybody in the community deserves equal rights and to not face discrimination because of their protected characteristics, so we hope our feelings are heard and considered.
