Consultation on Long Buckby library launched

The proposals are for all of these to be community managed and non-statutory, with the exception of Duston which will remain part of the statutory offer and under county council management.

Cllr Cecile Irving-Swift, deputy leader of the county council with the responsibility for the Library Service, said: “At the heart of this proposal is the fact that we’ve worked with some wonderful community groups who, like us at the county council, clearly have a passion for books.

“At this stage these are simply proposals and what we need now is for people to have their say on what they think of these plans.”

The final eight libraries being consulted on are Irchester, Finedon, St James, Duston, Long Buckby, Far Cotton, Higham Ferrers and Abington.

The consultation will run for just over eight weeks until March 22 and there will be public engagement events at all of these except for Duston, where there is no change proposed.

The consultation for the first 28 libraries closes on February 8, so there will be a two-week overlap with the final eight so that people can consider all 36 proposals and respond to these with this in mind.

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 visit www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/library-consultation