Ideas to improve libraries

Ideas to improve libraries

Surrey County Council is in talks with users of all 11 libraries that local communities have the chance to take over.

Denise Saliagopoulos, Surrey County Council’s Cabinet Member for Community Services, said: “People have come up with excellent suggestions for how community partnerships could work and they should be commended for this.

“Some of the good ideas would prove difficult for the council to do on its own but the flexibility of a community partnership and the local knowledge of volunteers could make them work. People are already thinking about how to tailor their libraries to meet the individual needs of local communities.

“The council has to save more than £200 million over four years. We’re trying to stretch a smaller budget to keep all 52 of Surrey’s libraries open while continuing to invest in the service. We’ve come up with a solution that will hopefully keep open the 11 branches but we need the support of library users to succeed.”

Local suggestions include:

* Tailoring opening times at Virginia Water so people can use it during the commuter rush after locals identified this as a key time for library use (currently the library does not open before 10am or after 5pm during the week)
* Looking at changing the opening hours at Byfleet so the library could open more regularly (currently it only opens on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays)
* Exploring expanding the use of Warlingham library so it could become a cultural and community centre

Other ideas discussed include opening up unused rooms for community activities, running parcel collection services and staging a wider range of community events in libraries.

Paul Kardos-Stowe, from the Virginia Water library steering group said: “Virginia Water Library is embracing the community partnership idea as a way of securing the long term future of the library. It will provide the opportunity for the community to shape its library and increase its services to genuinely have an involvement in something of value for current and future users.

“The offer that Surrey County Council is making is much better than some other councils are making across the country and we will be delighted to work with them on providing a library that the community can be proud of.”

Under the proposals the county council would continue to provide the building, stock, IT equipment and other services to support communities to take over the day-to-day running of their library so it can reflect the individual needs of local communities.

Creating 11 community partnered libraries in Surrey would save around £400,000 a year. The council will continue to invest in libraries including the increasingly popular virtual library, which is used three million times a year.

ENDS

For more information contact Surrey County Council senior media relations officer James Oxley on 0208 541 7259.

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