Amble Puffin Festival was a success but could change in future

It has also been stressed that EU-referendum campaigners who wore puffin onesies and handed out political material were not connected to the event.

The annual extravaganza took place from May 28 to June 4, and Mayor Jane Dargue described it as absolutely fantastic, while Coun Jeff Watson said it was great.

However, he did question whether it placed too much time and effort on town-council workers and wondered if a week was too long.

Coun Helen Lewis said: “This is going to be discussed at our wash-up meeting. It is good for the town, but it does place an enormous workload on our admin staff.

“We will discuss whether it is necessary to have the four full days in the Town Square. We might need to consider in the future whether we can do this sort of thing.

“We will look at it and we could maybe look at some form of events management, but we would have to pay and the majority of the things at the festival are free, so there is no money coming in.”

She added: “Thank you to everybody who supported the event. There seems to be a lot of favourable reports about what took place.”

But Coun Martin Horn questioned the ethics behind having a static display of birds of prey. He said: “Should keeping birds captive be part of our puffin festival?” Coun Lewis said the person who had the display did workshops and educated people. She added: “We probably wouldn’t have the same thing every year.”