Mr Justice Wilkie ruled in the High Court yesterday that Surrey County Council had “failed to have due regard to equality issues”, over its decision that 10 libraries should be run by volunteers. In what was billed by legal experts as a “sharp reminder for local authorities” over cost-cutting plans, Mr Justice Wilkie said the council had failed to consider “the nature and extent of the equality training needs of volunteers” when it took its decision last September. The scheme was challenged by local residents whose lawyers accused the council of failing to comply with the Equality Act 2010 by not paying “rigorous regard” to how the removal of paid staff would affect the accessibility of libraries to vulnerable users, including children, elderly and the disabled. The judge is expected to decide next month what orders, if any, to make against the council after upholding the challenge. North Yorkshire County Council, which is embarking on an unprecedented transfer of the running of many of its 42 libraries to volunteers in a bid to counter £69m in Government cuts, said yesterday its plans would remain unaffected by the decision. Coun Chris Metcalfe, executive member for library services, said: “We have worked very closely with our communities all the way along. We are engaging closely with volunteer groups and putting up necessary support services to ensure that these people have got help and assistance as and when they require. It is not what Surrey Council is doing that was wrong, but the way it was doing it. “We feel through the way we have worked so closely with local communities throughout this process, we are on the right side of the law.” Earlier this year, the county council handed over Masham Library to the Masham Volunteer Trust, one of eight having funding pulled and being transferred to volunteers, with 14 more having their budgets slashed by 30 per cent. The county council also plans to remove 36 posts from its 177 full-time library staff, while opening hours in many branches are to be cut. Following the ruling, Barnsley MP and Shadow Libraries Minister Dan Jarvis, attacked Culture Minister Ed Vaizey for failing to do his job of “supporting library services across England”. “This is the fourth example of the High Court doing Ed Vaizey’s job for him,” he said. “This Government has showed no urgency and no leadership in tackling this problem. While I accept that libraries can and should bring in volunteers to reduce costs, this should be about sensible engagement with the local community rather than a shuffling-off of responsibility. The Tory vision of the ‘big society’ is an ideological cloak for diluting the basic premise that these services are a fundamental duty of a decent society, and should be treated as such.” Public Interest Lawyers solicitor Phil Shiner, who represented both applicants in the High Court, said: “This is a fantastic result for the claimants, as well as a sharp reminder to local authorities up and down the country that a need for budget cuts is not an excuse for cutting local services without careful consideration of how such cuts will impact upon vulnerable groups.” Surrey County Council’s community library scheme is aimed at keeping its 52 libraries open. A spokesman said the scheme could still go ahead because the case had been lost only on a “technical challenge” and the judge had not criticised the actual scheme.