Bury Council’s Cabinet at its meeting on  Wednesday 25 January 2017 agreed to consult on proposals to close up to 11 of our 14 libraries.

The Council has been consulting on library service for a number of months, though for everyone involved in the consultation (which never mentioned closures) these plans will come as a huge surprise.

The options to be sent to public consultation are:

• Option 1 – Close 11 Libraries, keeping Bury (with Archives), Prestwich and Ramsbottom.
• Option 2 – Close 10 Libraries, keeping Bury (with Archives), Prestwich, Ramsbottom and Radcliffe.

Please sign our petition to save our precious libraries.

Bury currently has 14 library buildings in total, 7 original “township” libraries and 7 smaller, part-time, “community libraries” which were added to the town between 1999 and 2014 to meet reasons of social inclusion and to support smaller communities.

Across Bury there are currently 54,632 registered users of Libraries:
Bury – 18,458
Prestwich – 10,897
Radcliffe – 7,449
Ramsbottom – 4,695
Tottington – 2,720
Unsworth, 3,612
Whitefield, 3,758
Other library or service, 3,043

The Libraries which would be closed under both options proposed for consultation would be:
Ainsworth Library, Brandlesholme Library, Castle Leisure Centre Library, Coronation Road Library. Dumers Lane Library, Moorside Library, Topping Fold Library, Tottington Library, Unsworth Library, Whitefield Library.

The current library service costs the council £2.4 million per year. Most people will be aware that local councils are being forced to make significant savings by Government, but ultimately all Councils have choices to make.

We have two specific concerns:
– leaving whole areas without libraries will ultimately only hurt the most vulnerable in our community, those who are least able to travel, and those who are most lonely.
– insufficient attempts have been made to find alternative ways of providing libraries – e.g. volunteer, community or charity run libraries, which would enable a wider service to be maintained whilst still saving money.

Please sign our petition to send a strong message to the Council that we need to save our local libraries.