Staffordshire County Council will continue to manage and staff Stone library under new proposals backed by its Cabinet today that will see almost half of its libraries around the county run by volunteers.
Proposals guided by three rounds of public and staff consultation over the last 12 months were approved by Staffordshire County Council’s Cabinet on 18th February. Stone is not one of the libraries that will be run by local volunteers, and opening hours look set to remain as they are.
The plan will mean that 20 of the council’s 43 libraries – including Stone – will be managed and staffed by the county council, while the remainder will be supported and delivered by the community, with access to formal council support. Some community groups will take responsibility for managing and delivering their local library service as soon as they have satisfied the necessary conditions. Others will go to a transitional stage where volunteers staff the library on a day-to-day basis and the library will be part of a cluster, again with support from a member of county council library staff.
Mike Lawrence, Cabinet member with responsibility for libraries, said: “The purpose of this consultation in the face of reducing demand was to create a service relevant and sustainable to communities for the next 10, 15 or 20 years. After refining our ideas through hundreds of hours of consultations with thousands of people, I believe we have a flexible, imaginative solution which fits the bill.”
You can read the Cabinet report with all of the details HERE
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