The birds had nothing to do with it

The macaws did not ask to become a governance story. They were just macaws. They lived in Churchtown, they were very loud, and by all accounts they were extremely well looked after by a team who had spent years making something genuinely good out of some ageing cages. They were not a planning obstacle. They were not an inconvenience. They were birds.

Then someone decided they were a welfare crisis.

Here is how you know it was not a welfare crisis. When you have a welfare crisis, you contact the welfare experts first. You build the case. You let the evidence lead the decision. What Sefton Council did was vote to close the aviary in February 2026, tell nobody for five months, and then ring PETA about a fortnight before the story broke in July. The BBC confirmed it. The experts who backed the closure backed a decision that had already been made. They were not the reason. They were the reason that was found afterwards.

Marion Atkinson, the council leader, said the closure was not about money. The budget document said it was about money. Both of these things appeared in public, within months of each other, and the council did not appear to find this embarrassing. You have to admire the brass neck, if nothing else.

The aviary costs £80,750 a year to run. Sefton Council's total funding gap is £91.757 million. Closing the aviary addresses 0.088% of the problem. Less than a tenth of a tenth of one percent. You could fund the aviary for a full year on what the council paid a single property company in a single payment in June 2025 and still have £269,250 left over. That payment is for something listed in the council's accounts as “Regeneration Scheme 1.” What Regeneration Scheme 1 is has not been publicly explained. An FOI request has been pending for months.

The aviary is closing. Regeneration Scheme 1 is fine.

That is not a coincidence of priorities. That is a statement of them.

Before the closure was announced, the council sold a building that was physically inside the Botanic Gardens. The proceeds went to the general fund. Not to the park. Not to the Heritage Lottery match that would have turned every pound into nine. To the pot.

When the Liberal Democrats asked for the money from that sale to be used to save the aviary and fund the Heritage Lottery bid, Labour voted it down. They were asked again. Labour voted it down again. Thirty-five to twenty-seven. Twice. On the same question. In the same building. Regarding money from the same park.

There is a Heritage Lottery bid in development that needs match funding. Match funding which, if secured, would turn every £100 raised into £1,000 of park investment. The council sold a building inside the park and did not put the money toward that. Make of that what you will.

There is a transformation plan for the Botanic Gardens. It has been in development since September 2020, when the Southport Town Deal Board — which does not meet in public — first proposed it. The plan needs the aviary site for new visitor attractions. The aviary sits about thirty metres from the park entrance. Best spot in the place.

The chair of the Town Deal Board that originated this plan is the founder of Fletchers Solicitors. He sold the firm to a US private equity company in 2021 and kept a share of it. That firm is now valued at £240 million. His lock-up on that equity expires next month. He has never once declared any of this at a board meeting. The board, eight days ago, decided he should carry on as chair.

Another board member's company received a digital consultancy contract from the same board after he stood up and suggested his company was “well placed and uniquely qualified” for it. The approval was taken off-meeting, so there is no public record of a vote. This is in the published minutes. In black and white. Nobody at the council seems to have found it worth remarking on at the time, or since.

Governance is not usually dramatic. It is usually this: a meeting that is not public, a declaration that is not made, a document that is not joined up with the other documents, an approval that happens on email, a justification that is assembled after the fact. Nobody raises their voice. Nobody needs to.

Connor Atherton has worked at the aviary for three years. He said the birds were his life and that the team had spent years making something worth having. He accepted it was outdated. He never said it was perfect. He said it deserved to be improved, piece by piece, and he was going to keep fighting for it.

That is a very Churchtown thing to say, honestly. That is the voice of someone who lives in the town, works in the town, and thinks the town is worth the effort of improving rather than replacing.

The council does not share this view of improvement. The council prefers transformation plans, stakeholder groups, pre-development grants, and Heritage Lottery bids that need the old thing gone before the new thing can begin. This is a different philosophy. It is not better. It is just the one that currently has the votes.

The macaws are being rehomed. The African grey parrots are being rehomed. The conures, the cockatiels, the ringneck parakeets. One hundred and seventy birds that were not sick, were not suffering, and were not the reason. Being rehomed because the site was needed.

The Botanic Gardens aviary opened in 1939. It outlasted eighty-seven years of Southport's best and worst. It did not outlast the Southport Town Deal Board.

That is not a welfare story. That is not a budget story. It is a governance story. The birds just happened to be in the way.