As you may be aware, Northamptonshire County Council recently started a consultation on libraries in Northamptonshire.
The current draft proposal is to keep 14 libraries directly under the County Council’s management. Twenty-two would be community managed receiving both financial and organisational support from the Council. The plan would also see money from developer contributions used to invest in individual libraries.
Initially there were individual consultations for 28 of the libraries. The consultation for the remaining eight started on the 23rd January 2019.
The eight are: Abington, Duston, Far Cotton, Finedon, Higham Ferrers, Irchester, Long Buckby and St James.
The consultation will run for just over eight weeks until the 22nd March 2019. There will be public engagement events at all of these except for Duston, where there is no change proposed as it will stay a part of the statutory offer under the county council’s management.
The consultation for the initial 28 libraries will end on the 8th February 2019. There will therefore be a slight overlap on the consultations, so people will be able to consider all the 36 libraries.
Once the consultations have been completed then the county council will consider all of the responses as one and will be taking a paper to Cabinet in May with the outcome of the consultation and final proposals for Cabinet to approve.
To go to the consultation, please visit: www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/library-consultation.