Minutes:
Before the recent council elections, I asked a question about an unnecessary suggestion that the much used Maiden Erlegh library may close. At this Executive, I was informed that the decision was to be held back until June (after the local elections). I ask the Executive and the Council again what is being done to ensure that the much used Maiden Erlegh library is kept open.
Answer
The response to the previous question stated that the decision to end the Council’s use of the Maiden Erlegh School site library was taken by Maiden Erlegh School in February 2018 in accordance with the lease arrangements that have been in place for 34 years.
Prior to this the school requested that the Council change the opening hours of the library to be after the end of the school day. This the Council did from 2 January 2018. It was disappointing, therefore, that only a few weeks later the school terminated our lease, closing the library.
In response to your previous supplementary question, I said we intended to bring a paper to the June Executive on our library service and the impact of closing the Maiden Erlegh library. There is a paper at this evening’s meeting explaining how the Council continues to meet its statutory obligations to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for the residents of Wokingham Borough.
The assessment shows that the Council has been successful in providing an increasingly well-used library service for the people who live, work and visit the Borough. The closure of the Maiden Erlegh Library is likely to have only a small impact on residents’ ability to access library services due to the close proximity of alternative libraries that are open for substantially longer hours each week.
Finally just to repeat – the decision to close the library was taken by Maiden Erlegh School not me.
Supplementary Question
There will be locations within Maiden Erlegh where the library could be relocated. The Council is spending a huge amount of money redeveloping Wokingham town centre. Surely, we could spend a few hundred thousand on a much needed library for the local community?
Supplementary Answer
Again, just to repeat, it was the school that closed the library, not us. We had no desire to close the library, so you should direct your ire to the school rather than us.
The Lower Earley library is less than a mile away and the Woodley library is about 2.5 miles away, so there are other libraries that serve the area that people can get to. When we started our assessment of the people who use this library we were concerned that there might be a number of vulnerable people who could not get to other libraries. There are 6 pensioners who use the Maiden Erlegh library and no other library. Our library staff are focussing on people like this to assess whether they can still access services.
The vast majority of people who only use the Maiden Erlegh library (there are 171 of them) are pupils of the school and their immediate families, so it is a school issue rather than a community issue. We have been doing lots over the years to increase the footfall in our libraries and have been very successful in doing that. The strategy we have for libraries is working compared to other boroughs where usage of libraries is dropping. We do everything we can to encourage people to use our libraries.