Bury Council’s Cabinet met last week to consider the future of Bury’s 14 Libraries. The meeting was the end of a nearly year-long process to review the library provision across Bury.

The outcome is that TEN libraries will close. Ainsworth, Brandlesholme, Castle Leisure, Coronation Road, Dumers Lane, Moorside, Topping Fold, Tottington, Unsworth and Whitefield.

FOUR Libraries will stay open: Bury central library, Ramsbottom, Radcliffe and Prestwich. Radcliffe had been threatened with possible closure, but the conclusion of the review is that this should stay open.

Opposition Leaders are no longer allowed to vote on the Cabinet (we had our votes taken off us in May), but if we had been able to vote we would have voted against as we have at previous stages in the process.

We would be the first to agree that libraries are not for everyone. Changes in society have meant that the function libraries provided 40 years ago can be met in other ways for many people. But, for some other people, those needs are still there. Crucially libraries are also community spaces and we have precious few of these left. Age UK research shows at 1.6 million older people in the UK are chronically lonely (e.g. no contact at all with friends, neighbours or family in an average week). The outcome of Bury Council’s conclusion is that whole areas of Bury (e.g. Whitefield, Unsworth and Tottington) will have no library at all in their community.

Secondly, we believe Bury hasn’t done enough to see whether there are other ways of keeping places open using community groups and/or volunteers. Other places in the country haven’t closed a single library, by using volunteers and community groups to keep smaller libraries open (the books and the systems are already in place for the bigger libraries). Although the Council says that it is open to community groups coming forward to take on the 10 libraries that are open BUT we believe that the timescale now makes this highly unlikely in almost all cases (the 10 libraries will shut their doors in less than 3 months now).

Thirdly, we believe that the Council’s consultation process didn’t provide a real chance for people to say what they wanted for their local libraries. The first stage of the Library consultation asked people what they through of a number of ‘principles’ for libraries – it was difficult to disagree with any of them and not many people did! The second stage asked people whether then wanted to CLOSE 10 libraries, or close 11 libraries. Hardly much of a choice!