LYME REGIS: Library is saved!

LYME Regis library has been saved. That was the welcome news received by town councillors at their meeting last week - but the library will stay in its present Silver Street location, according to county councillor Colonel Geoffery Brierley.

Colonel Brierley, who has fought the closure of 20 smaller libaries in Dorset in a bid to cut £800,000 from the county budget, confirmed that the Lyme library was safe during his monthly report to the town council.

Colonel Brierley reminded councillors that at the first  protest meeting held in Lyme he had said that if he was a betting man he would have laid odds on the Lyme library being saved and he revealed that two options for the reorganisation of the county library service would be considered by the county council at their full meeting on July 21st.

Whichever option is chosen, the Lyme library will continue to operate from Silver Street.

The two options under consideration by the county  council are that ten of the 20 threatened libraries will be saved (Lyme Regis among them) or that all 20 will be saved.

If the county council go for the first option, Charmouth library would be closed, said Colonel Brierley. 

He told the council: “It has been a hard struggle but one which we look like winning.”

And he added: “ At least Lyme library is safe.”

Colonel Brierley said that it was the fifth time that he had been involved in trying to save libraries from closure in Dorset and it was time such uncertainty stopped.

“We need a clear period going forward and to stop mucking  about with the libraries.”

After the meeting, Colonel Brierley told the View from Lyme Regis that as far as he was concerned the Lyme library will stay in its present position in Silver. 

“As long as I am a county council I will be pushing for this,” he said.

But the Lyme Regis Library Action Group, led by town councillors Lorna Jenkin and Anita Williams, has ambitions for a new library site to be provided behind The Hub youth club in Church Street in the hope that the current library site could be released for affordable housing.

Lyme Regis Development Trust received a sum of £2,370 in the recent allocation of grants from the town council towards initial costs for this project.

Councillor Jenkin told the View that they were waiting for the final decision from the county council that the library had been saved before entering into further discussions with county hall over the possibility of the library moving to The Hub site.