What, where, when?

Things going down on Merseyside this week

Greetings fellow Monitorites,

It’s that time of the week again when we dig through the council calendars of Merseyside to find out what‘s going to being discussed next. If you’re new here, welcome. We send this email out usually on a Sunday night or Monday morning and it mostly contains details of meetings coming up across local authorities this week, and it is a packed week indeed.

Last week in our Sunday email, we explained how the Monitor’s team had got a little bit smaller since we sacked off the cats, who had made up more than half of our team, and had been up to all kinds of nefarious shenanigans - from submitting dodgy FOIs about Liver Birds to harassing catnip producers and sending us, here at the Monitor, completely spurious legal threats, which we of course bravely faced down.

Anyway, we’re very glad they’re not on the scene because last week we were taking a look at aviaries. Well, one in particular, which Sefton Council announced at the end of June was going to be shut down in either a cost saving measure or out of concerns for the birds, or maybe both.

The decision to close the Botanic Garden’s octogenarian aviary has sparked a huge public backlash with something of a social media tornado and hundreds turning up to a meeting organised by local Labour MP Patrick Hurley on Friday to find out if anything can be done to keep the aviary open. It turned out the decision to shut it had been made, as a budget saving, back in January, which we explored in this piece earlier in the week:

The budget line that sealed Southport aviary’s fate

Who paid attention to the line on page 17? When Sefton Council announced last week that Southport’s 87 year old aviary would close, there was an immediate public backlash. The BBC reported a bird keeper describing the news as a ‘bolt from the blue’, residents were in uproar all

The Mersey MonitorLisa Rand

The fact that it was decided at full council back in January has potentially proved a little bit awkward for many councillors in the borough, because following the decision this wasn’t publicly discussed by any. Had councillors seen the item in the report at the time or not? Well, the jury remains out on that one, because despite the Monitor’s best attempts to get some clarity on the issue by emailing all sitting councillors who were at that meeting to find out, nobody replied.

We can understand why people might not want to answer that one - either it was spotted and nothing was said, or it wasn’t - in which case how deeply was the budget report scrutinised? In any case, the row continues, and we’ll be keeping an eye on what next here at the Monitor.

We’ve also been taking a keen interest in all things St Helens. Last week we reported how the standards committee were told about a huge rise in councillor complaints, centring on one councillor in particular, who has not been named. You can find out more here:

One councillor behind sharp rise in complaints

The borough has seen more code of conduct complaints in two months than the whole of the previous year A single councillor is behind a sharp rise in code of conduct complaints at one Merseyside council, a senior officer has revealed. Monitoring officer Jan Bakewell, whose role includes handling code

The Mersey MonitorLisa Rand

We tend to only send out one email per week, which is this round-up (although we do like to keep you on your toes so you might get the odd extra every now and again) - so please do check back on the site to see what we’ve been taking a look at in the meantime.

Now, a little bit belatedly and somewhat truncated (we’re blaming the heat) - time for this week’s diary, handily bringing together council meetings across Merseyside:

Decisions, decisions, decisions 

As ever, this guide is far from exhaustive, but we would like to be as comprehensive as possible, so if we’ve overlooked something important, please do get in touch and we can add it in. You can email themerseymonitor@outlook.com or drop us a text on 07442 402 023.

If you’re not reading this by email, just click on an event to expand the box and see more details, including any booking links. All events listed are free to attend. We have not verified the information in the events listings, so please do get in touch if something appears amiss.

Tuesday 14 July

Wednesday 15 July

Thursday 16 July

Friday 17 July

before you go …

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