CHINEHAM library is set to remain open after Hampshire County Council reconsidered closing the facility.

Ten libraries across Hampshire, including three in the Basingstoke area, were put at risk by HCC in January as part of plans to save £1.76 million from the service.

These included Chineham, South Ham and Odiham, whilst community-managed Kingsclere library was told that the council were considering ceasing its funding.

Now, announcing the results of the consultation, which saw the most responses in HCC history, the county council have announced that eight libraries will close, in revised proposals that will see Hampshire's other libraries have their hours cuts by an average of a fifth.

This means that Chineham, which was the only tier-two library to appear on the shortlist, survives, whilst Emsworth library near Havant also escapes the cut.

However, it was less good news for the residents of South Ham and Odiham, who will see their libraries close by the end of the year.

Cllr Sean Woodward, executive member for recreation and heritage, will make the final decision next Tuesday, July 28.

Speaking after it was announced the Chineham will stay open for now, Cllr Woodward said: "They really did engage with the consultation in a big way.

"Some of the issues that they brought up did cause officers to have a very very close look at the impacts on closing Chineham.

"They made some very valid points and as a result of looking again, Chineham stays open, if it is approved as recommended."

Since The Gazette reported in January that the libraries could be at risk, the community has rallied around its libraries.

There had been 21,200 responses to the official consultation, whilst another 5,400 signed petitions and 1,400 attended meetings.

Of those, 70 per cent said that the service needs to adapt. 21 per cent preferred the option where ten libraries would close, with 58 per cent instead opting for a reduction in operating hours alone.

However, council officials were unconvinced that the preferred option would be able to make the required amount of savings, and so opted for a compromise solution. The remaining eight libraries on the closure list account for less than five per cent of the issues of books and less than five per cent of visits.

Hampshire's libraries are already open for shorter hours than usual because of the coronavirus crisis, and they will transition from these reduced hours to the new operating hours over the course of the next two months.

Timeline:

  • July & August 2020: Libraries to transition to new operating hours
  • August 2020: Short consultation to be held to ask the public what the new opening hours should be for their library.
  • September 2020: Staff consultation to be held on 40-50 FTE (out of 400 members of staff) redundancies.
  • January 1, 2021: Majority of the eight libraries to close.
  • April 1, 2021: Community libraries will have their financial support from HCC withdrawn.

Officers also said that their planned increase in income has been postponed.

HCC were hoping to make more money from their library services over the next years in order to help save the £1.76m, but because of the Covid-19 crisis, this is not feasible.

Instead, slightly more is to be saved from the operations budget - £1.115m instead of £1.04m.

Of this, £340,000 is to be made from the eight closures, whilst £775,000 will be generated from a reduction in opening hours.

£240,000 of savings was made in 2019-2020, which will be enhanced with £210,000 in savings from 2020-21.

Additionally, £49,000 will be saved from the cessation of support from Tier 4 libraries, whilst £146,000 will be made in efficiencies, such as staff redundancies.