FREE COPY Part of your community
& surrounding areas Part of your community
Contact details: 01484 420800
January/February 2015
Group aims to save Holmfirth’s library By Olivia Taylor A GROUP of Holmfirth locals are looking to team up to form a steering group in an attempt to prevent the closure of one of the Holme Valley's most well-used libraries. Scores of people crammed into Holmfirth Methodist Church on January 15 to discuss the council's plans, which could see just two libraries – in Huddersfield and Dewsbury – surviving the mass cull across the entire district. Since autumn 2012, voluntary ‘friends’ of the library groups have been established across Kirklees in a bid to safeguard their future. But unlike nearby Honley, Holmfirth has not yet formed a steering group and Jason McCartney, MP for the Colne Valley, is keen for volunteers to form one. He said: “It is most definitely worthy to have a
group. I use the library with my family and people of the Holme Valley value the service. “Only one has closed locally and that was New Mill in 2009, but when that was closed Holmfirth's library was cited as a wellused place that could take on the people of New Mill, too. ‘I would be very pleased if the community came together and formed a friends group for the town. I’ve engaged with Honley’s and one is being set up in Golcar. Where there is a will there is a way.’ Concerned users have now put their names forward to form a friends group in a bid to stave off the very real threat of closure. Coun Donald Firth, of the Holme Valley South ward, told the Review: ‘Holmfirth's library is very important as it is a leisure area, it doesn’t just hand
out books. Its information service really is second to none – tourists get to know so much from that resource. “If they decide to close the library they may as well put gates up and close the entire town as it is the first thing tourists go to. If that is closed, the link is lost. Closing it should never have even been contemplated.” More than a hundred people attended the meeting, which saw questions being answered by a library team including Coun Graham Turner, Kirklees Council's portfolio holder for resources. He said: “The economic downturn has meant that the library service will now have to deliver services with a much reduced budget and we need to look at new ways of working to ensure we maintain an efficient and comprehensive service.
More than a hundred people “We are committed to providing the best service we can within the financial constraints of a reduced budget. We have been engaging with many groups over the last few months to try to find positive solutions to enable us to provide a library service with the help
attended a meeting to discuss the library’s future. tionnaire is now available in and support of local comlibraries and community munities. venues for residents to have “It is proposed that the their say. council should seek opporThe library service is tunities to co-locate libraries with other services working with QA Research Ltd on the library-specific to achieve savings while consultation, which will run maintaining service proviover a 12-week period until sion.” April 10. A self-completion ques-
Visit www.holmevalleyreview.co.uk to keep up to date with all the news from the Holme Valley