A PETITION signed by 10,000 people calling for the scrapping of the controversial proposals for Warrington’s libraries, will be presented to the borough council on Monday.
It’s more than a month since the petition was handed in to the council – and it is one of the biggest library petitions in the country and one of the biggest Warrington petitions ever.
It calls on the council to “bin the proposals to close, move or water down Warrington’s libraries” and instead commit to keeping all libraries open.
Petition organiser Dina Kingsnorth-Baird will have five minutes to speak to the petition, after which the council can debate the matter for up to 15 minutes.
The council then has a number of options – including agreeing to the petition’s demands, refusing to do so and giving reasons or commissioning further investigation.
Ms Kingsnorth-Baird said: “The council’s rules mean they have to debate the petition because of how many people signed it. They probably won’t be making a final decision about our libraries at this meeting, but they could use this as a chance to signal their support for the dumping of Livewire’s proposals, and a fresh start, if they wanted to.
“It’s been a month since we handed our petition of over 10,000 names in to Warrington Borough Council calling on them to dump Livewire’s proposals to decimate our library service, and start again.
“We’ve been beavering away looking at the gaps and potential challenges, we’ve uncovered information that’s been shared with the council, but not the public, we’ve been looking in to our legal options, we’ve been asking a lot of questions of the council (some of which they are starting to answer) and we’ve been considering what comes next.
“I will be presenting to the full Council with my personal thoughts on why our libraries are so important. And my position is clear: the proposals presented were terrible, the consultation was inadequate and the council should start again.”
A separate petition calling for Lymm library to be saved will also be presented to the meeting.
Campaigners outside Lymm Library
1 Comment
The only thing WBC will be doing at Monday’s meeting is making a list of the points of objection which they can then form counter arguments to.
The best thing to do now is to let them forge ahead with their plans putting both feet well and truly in.
They can then find out the hard way the real meaning of “lessons have been learned”!