Thousand of people signed a petition – aimed at saving Rottingdean library from closure – and it was formally presented to Brighton and Hove City Council last night (Monday 13 October).
The library, in The Grange, is one of three under threat of closure as part of a programme to save £250,000 from the council’s budget over two years.
A public consultation ended on Friday (10 October) after a series of public meetings, protests and pleas to the council to keep Rottingdean, Westdene and Hollingbury libraries open.
Campaigner Caroline Ellis presented the petition, which had 104 responses on the council’s website, at a meeting of the full council at Hove Town Hall last night.
Almost 3,800 people signed the petition in support of the library on the Change.org website, she told the meeting, and more than 1,000 people signed a paper petition.
Councillors heard that hundreds of local children took part in a poster competition in support of the library.
The petition described the library as the only place in the village where people could access free wifi, computers, scanners and printers.
She said: “We strongly believe that the proposal to close the library is wrong. Rottingdean library is a well-used library with separate sections for children and teenagers.
“It is important in an area with an increasing number of families and is close to two primary schools and two nurseries.”
Labour councillor Alan Robins, the council’s cabinet member for sports, recreation and libraries, said that tough decisions had to be made when setting the budget and one of these was the proposed libraries cuts.
Councillor Robins said: “We’ve analysed the data on how libraries are used, the needs of the communities and the geographic spread of each area.
“Taking a city-wide approach, the proposals maintain a statutory library service with access to books, spaces, wifi and computers in 10 libraries across the city.”
As well as the proposed closures, reductions in evening and weekend opening are also proposed for the Jubilee Library, in Brighton, and the Hove Carnegie Library.
Councillor Robins said that the feedback gathered from the survey and public meetings would be presented to the council’s cabinet when the library savings were up for debate on Thursday 12 December.
A petition is easy, but how to save it, and actually doing it, that’s a much more important question.
This story’s a bit confusing when they get on to numbers. Surely it should say (one paragraph, not two) something like:
“Campaigner Caroline Ellis presented the petition at a meeting of the full council at Hove Town Hall last night. She told the meeting almost 3,800 people signed in support of the library on the Change.org website. In addition, more than 1,000 people signed a paper petition, and 104 responses came in via the council’s website.”
Can I ask why oh why, do you keep saying save Hollingbury library Unfortunately it has long gone 9 houses being built on the site now So we didn’t save our Library So good luck to all the library ‘s underthreat In the future