Refurbish Walkley library in Sheffield and secure its future - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Paige Turner, Surrey Street, Sheffield.
Last year the council sold off one of Sheffield's two Carnegie libraries at Tinsley having spent years undoing the covenant on the building which prohibited use other than community use for the benefits of people living there.
Today Walkley library could be under similar threat. The voluntary group currently running the library do not have a lease with the council according to the latest annual return on the charity commission website.
The building has been subject to several schemes in recent years since the council library service was withdrawn as a cost cutting measure by the Labour Council back in 2014.
Successive counsellors from the Labour and Green Party have failed to call in the issue of Sheffield's only Carnegie library facing an uncertain future given the state of the building and the lack of political will to refurbish it as a library on the council's part.
Ironically had the council not transferred the building outside of its own control back in 2014 the building would have been eligible for funding from the library improvement fund which has recently been used to refurbish historic library buildings at Hillsborough in Sheffield and at South Yorkshire's only remaining Carnegie library building at Wombwell.
The disdain with which Green and Labour councillors representing the area have treated both the rights of Walkley residents to a staffed library service and the history and heritage of the building itself is frankly disgusting and a record which warrants resignations from the ward councillors involved and the new chair of the council committee responsible for the library service Councillor Brian Holmshaw if he fails to act to preserve the Carnegie library building at Walkley for future generations as a council library, and will be a record he will accrue with great irony given his position as the self appointed Green party heritage champion for Sheffield.
Is it any wonder that Reform UK are picking up votes when Green and Labour Party councillors fail to act to preserve and maintain essential services and heritage buildings. Let's refurbish Walkley library as a council library and have its future secured for future residents of the building to enjoy.