YP Letters: Libraries are more important than offices

Is the regeneration of Sheffield city centre coming at the expense of local libraries?

LIBRARIES form an important part of communities which find themselves miles away from the centre of town like Stannington here in Sheffield.

Stannington Library is a small library about twice the size of two or three moored caravans, the kind you find at holiday parks on the Yorkshire coast. The building is modern and small, so overhead costs must be low. The staff were only part-time so they, too, can’t have cost that much.

In the last few months, our council has borrowed tens of millions to build more shops and offices in the city centre which no one needs or wants, and which the council has admitted it has no idea how much it will benefit from financially.

Yet we are told that the council cannot afford the three wonderful part-time library  staff that we lost a couple of years ago.

I am admittedly quite perplexed as to the reasoning behind the decision to ‘de-staff’ our lovely little library which struck me as a damaging yet completely unnecessary decision which has deprived us of one of our most valued services.

The demolition and continued ruination of our city centre is not a higher funding priority than our wonderful library staff and it is wrong of our council to claim that it is.