MP calls for probe into book binning scandal

10:30am Wednesday 11th June 2008

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STOURBRIDGE MP Lynda Waltho has asked Libraries Minister Margaret Hodge to investigate after the News revealed thousands of the town's library books were removed from the shelves and binned in a skip.

The Labour MP described Dudley Council's book-culling saga as "one step away from censorship and book burning".

And now, amid fears the removal of books is just the start of Dudley Council's controversial library modernisation plans, she has asked the Government's library chief Margaret Hodge to keep her eye on the situation...which comes nine months after the council rubber-stamped its unpopular proposal to close five of the borough's smaller libraries.

She told the News: "Not content with riding roughshod over the wishes of local people especially in Quarry Bank and Dudley Wood, we are now insulted with the binning of many thousands of well-loved, and useful texts.

"To hear staff are being instructed to throw away stock that is only a few years old just after the much-loved local archive has been taken from us has made many of us suspicious that the town library is being undermined ready for another bombshell to come."

Dudley Council claims the books were thrown away to clear the backlog resulting from a decade's worth of poor stock management - and has said there are no plans, either during or after the Crown Centre regeneration, to close or relocate Stourbridge Library.

Library bosses are also promising £8,000 worth of new stock for Stourbridge by Sunday June 22 and are extending the library's opening hours to include Sundays and later nights on Wednesday evenings.

Worried library users, however, remain concerned about the future of the Stourbridge - the borough's busiest library - which has seen its user numbers drop by 50 per cent between 1998/9 and 2006/7, according to research by Wall Heath councillor Dave Tyler - gathered during his fight to save his doomed village library, which is set to close on Saturday June 21.

Meanwhile - Amblecote Library, based at Wordsley's Brook School, closes this Saturday (June 14) - just two-and-a-half years after £50,000 of public money was spent on creating the facility for both the public and schoolchildren to use.

Headteacher Lynn Cartwright said: "It's very sad; it's closure of a really good up-to-date facility that could have been developed to the benefit of the local community. I think it's short-sighted."

She said the vacated library space would be used for new classrooms and the children's books from the facility would be donated to the school.