4th August 2011

PORTLAND: Councillor defends library closures

By Harry Walton

A PORTLAND county councillor has defended his part in a 21-20 decision to back withdrawing county funding from nine local libraries.

Les Ames represents Portland Tophill but voted to withdraw funding from the nine libraries which include neighbouring Underhill.

A full meeting of the authority proved a bitter disappointment for campaigners fighting to save funding for the nine sites.

Members had two choices to help the county library service save £800,000 – either to remove funding to nine libraries or to make cuts across the service but retain all 34 libraries.

The final vote went against saving the libraries despite a barrage of cat-calls and boisterous cheering from library campaigners.
A defiant Mr Ames said he had voted with the good of a future library service in mind.

He added: “I didn’t make this decision lightly and I spent weeks trying to work out what to do.

“At the end of the day I voted for Option B because I felt it was designed to build up our library service, to improve it, to increase its use and to give it a bigger role.”

Among other libraries to have funding withdrawn were Chickerell, Burton Bradstock, Charmouth, Puddletown and Wool.

Graham Lee, chairman of Ad Lib, the group campaigning to keep all Dorset’s libraries open said: “We are completely gutted to lose.

“The fact that there might be more cuts one day is no reason, in our view, for depriving these small and often isolated rural communities of their libraries. Their loss will cause much hardship among the young and the old and the disabled. Why inflict such pain when the feared cuts might never come?

‘We are down but we are not out. We will now fight to get the best deal we can for the libraries the council wants to wash its hands of.

“The main thing we will be arguing for is that any community which takes over the running of its library from the council should still be covered by the1964 Libraries Act.

“The council’s officers are telling us that, as voluntary bodies, we would not get that protection, but we’re not buying that. We have no confidence that without the law behind us, Dorset County Council would continue to supply us with the books we need to survive.”

Mr Lee added that Ad Lib would now be meeting with its legal advisors to decide how to proceed if any legal challenge to the council’s decision were decided on.

He said: “We will obviously be keeping in close touch with other counties in the south west which are pursuing such actions. Wherever possible we will work with them and their lawyers.”

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