LIBRARY campaign group SOLE – which led the successful campaign that saved two-thirds of Essex’s libraries back in 2019 – has expressed its alarm at proposed cuts to the library service in this year’s budget.  

Essex County Council (ECC) proposes slashing £100,000 from its library book fund, charging for reservations by adults (which ECC estimates will save a further £150,000), and making all libraries cashless (which is estimated to save another £10,000). The budget is to be voted on at the full council meeting this Thursday, 12th February. 

“It is meant to be the National Year of Reading, but this seems to have passed Essex County Council by”, said a SOLE spokesperson. “The first decade of austerity saw Essex Library Service cut its book stock by nearly half a million, so this £100,000 cut to the book fund hits an already depleted service.”

“Slashing the book fund will only increase the need for library users to reserve items, which they will now be charged for, so this is a double whammy. The suggestion from ECC that this is justified because poorer are less likely to reserve books, seems to rather write those poorer areas off.  The very people who need the service most. And introducing charges will mean those poorer areas will now be even less likely to order books.”

“As we have seen time and again before, cuts to libraries turn library users away. It seems extraordinary that the ECC leadership has chosen its biggest attack on our libraries since their closure plans were defeated at the end of the last decade, in what is not only the National Year of Reading, but also at a time the service is facing an uncertain future as local government is reorganised.

They’ll be well advised to remember that it is also an election year. If we do not see a U-turn on these cuts, councillors in the ruling party will regret it in May.”