Last updated at 12:58, Wednesday, 04 February 2009

THE Evening Mail has won a battle to save two Furness libraries.

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Cumbria County Council proposed shutting the Askam and Barrow Island branches this April to save less than £20,000 a year. The closures would have hit communities hard.

So the Evening Mail launched the Save Our Libraries campaign. It was backed by a variety of people; from elderly and disabled people to schools and families.

And yesterday the cabinet – a committee of Labour councillors, the biggest group on the council – rejected the closure proposals and agreed the libraries should stay open.

Leader of the Labour group and the council, Councillor Stewart Young, said: “Obviously, it was very high profile in Barrow because the North-West Evening Mail ran that campaign and a lot of our councillors in Barrow were contacted by concerned members of the public who were in support of their libraries and there was a petition and a lot of people had signed it.

“We’ve treated that as part of the consultation process.

“The feedback to us is that people want those libraries to stay and our response to it we’re not proposing to close them in our budget proposals.”

Barrow Island activist Anne Carruthers, who opposed the closure of the Barrow Island branch, said: “I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s a terrific decision by the county council, if that’s what they’ve come to.

“It’s such a well-used library it would have been a crime to take it away from us.”

Margaret Burrow, honorary secretary of Barrow and District Disability Association, also opposed library closures and was concerned about the impact of the closures on older and disabled people. She said community libraries are good places for people to meet and socialise, she said, and shutting them would mean people having to travel into town.

She added: “I’m very pleased that common sense has prevailed.”

As well as shutting libraries, the council also proposed other controversial moves. These included closing some retained fire stations, shutting six care homes, increasing home care and day care charges and putting its share of the council tax up by 3.5 per cent in April.

But the cabinet rejected those proposals.

And the 2009/10 budget approved yesterday would see the council’s share of the council tax rise by 2.5 per cent – less than inflation and the lowest since 1993. No redundancies are planned.

Cllr Young said: “Since taking over the administration in September, we’ve had a long, hard look at the way the county council operates and we believe we can make substantial efficiencies and in doing so we can protect frontline services.

“The private sector is having to do this in response to the economic situation and we should be no different.

“Things like more efficient use of our properties and looking at our travel costs are areas where we can make big savings.”

The draft budget for 2009/10 still needs to be approved by the full council, which meets on February 19, before it can be implemented.

And because Labour has fewer than half the councillors on the council and therefore no majority, it has to win support from the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats to get its budget approved.

The Tories and the Lib Dems could come up with different budget proposals. But anything unpopular with the public – like closing libraries – could prove costly for any political group because the elections are in June.

Cllr Young said: “I’m sure the other groups will have their own budget proposals which they will bring to council on February 19 and the reality is we don’t have control of the council so there will have to be negotiations between the groups in order to secure a majority.

“But I’m hopeful that the majority of our proposals will survive because I think there’s some very good stuff in there, but obviously it will depend on getting support from one or more of the other groups.”

First published at 11:51, Wednesday, 04 February 2009
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk