Still Time To Have Your Say In Council Libraries Consultation
Residents who haven’t yet given their views on Derbyshire County Council proposals to change the way libraries are run have less than a week to have their say.
County council Leader Councillor Barry Lewis is appealing to people who have not yet taken part in the consultation to fill in the online questionnaire before the deadline of midnight on 30 July.
The council currently runs 45 libraries across the county and two mobile libraries, but is proposing changes to achieve savings of £1.6m from the library service budget by 2021. The library service budget was more than £10m in 2010 and is currently £5.2m.
The authority launched a 12-week consultation in May asking for people’s views on its proposals, set out in the draft Derbyshire Public Library Strategy `Libraries for Derbyshire’.
The main proposed change is to transfer 20 libraries out of a total of 45 to community management.
Other proposals include a reduction in weekly opening hours across the library service, a reduction in the materials fund (books, audio books, eBooks, eMagazines, eAudio, online resources including newspapers), considering the future implementation of Smart libraries and stopping the DVD hire loan service.
The council has outlined its commitment to keeping libraries open and has been appealing to local communities to get involved.
Since the consultation launch there has been 49 drop-in sessions at libraries across the county, with two sessions held in some areas, and more in-depth focus groups have been set up in all areas where the local library is proposed for community management.
While guaranteeing that no Derbyshire libraries will close, Councillor Lewis has said that if there is a lack of community support for the proposals, all aspects of the library service would need to be reviewed.
This could lead to further significant reductions to opening hours, staffing, the materials fund and the mobile library service. Some libraries could be open for less than one day a week with few or no new books or resources added to the current stock.
The library service might also need to dramatically reduce the services currently available in all libraries, as well as being unlikely to deliver a range of additional services including talks, specialist events and work and benefits support.
However, if any further reduction proposals of this sort were to be put forward later on, these would then be subject to further consultation before any decision was made.
Councillor Lewis said: “I have said throughout the consultation that the council is committed to the library service and I have said that no libraries will close on my watch.
“Thousands of people have taken the time to have their say on our proposals, which I’m confident will secure the future of the service.
“With less than a week to go, I’m hoping that anyone who hasn’t had their say will do so before the deadline. It’s really important to us that we get as many views as possible so we can make informed decisions when the time comes.”
For more information about the consultation, and to fill in the consultation questionnaire, people should go to www.derbyshire.gov.uk/librariesforderbyshire
The deadline for filling in the consultation questionnaire is Monday 30 July.
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