THREE Almondbury councillors have performed a massive U-turn – and vowed to oppose plans to move the village library after a huge public outcry.

Councillors John Smithson, Linda Wilkinson and Ann Denham initially backed plans to move the Stocks Walk library to Fusseys Allotments.

But after being handed a petition with 900 signatures and attending a meeting of around 100 people on Tuesday night, they have come out in support of the community.

Kirklees Council announced plans last year for a new library, information point and children’s centre at Fussey Allotments, saying the existing village library was too small.

But many residents opposed the idea as did Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, and now the councillors have backed the objectors.

Clr Ann Denham said: “The people have spoken.

“We did propose the idea of a new larger library and information centre combined with a children’s centre on Fusseys. However this proposal is obviously not wanted by the people of Almondbury and therefore it no longer has our support.

“We would like to give credit – and indeed our congratulations – to the Friends of Almondbury Library, who have campaigned for the existing library to be retained and have demonstrated the public’s support for that outcome.

“Our approach has always been to consult on any idea of proposal we put forward. If it is shown not to have majority support then we are content to scrap it.

“This is what has happened here and we therefore call upon the Conservative administration to heed the wishes of the people of Almondbury and scrap this scheme.”

The turnaround comes the day after a public meeting with the councillors and residents.

Library user Dot Goodall said: “Their support can only be a good thing.

“What we want more than anything is to save the library and improve it – that is our aim.

“I hope we can now do that for the whole community.

“The message from the audience was very clear; of the 80 to 100 people at the meeting I believe there was only one person who was in favour of the library being moved.

“The author Joanne Harris was there and she spoke in favour of keeping the library where it is.

“We have so much pride in our library, it means a lot to everybody in the village.”

The campaign group and councillors now want a feasibility study of the existing 1905 Carnegie library to see if it can be enlarged, extended or altered.

They still remain committed to the children’s centre on the Fussey’s site and the possibility of a small children’s library.
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/trios-about-face-on-library-proposal-5044092
www.examinerlive.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-50
225610
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:NPZ7WLII52MKVZDYBYDTNTEILD6NDHIT
<urn:uuid:d0b4d8c6-b9ea-4de7-8ba3-e9af0cf70c72>
2020-12-05T02:39:01Z
54.192.30.51
text/html
sha1:MYZOQELNVPCNT6OHDH7MADW34SX57ZT2
<urn:uuid:e8a24640-7865-4b84-b1c3-ee9666ee9257>
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/trios-about-face-on-library-proposal-5044092
response
<urn:uuid:d3329d29-8b7c-4c02-83e5-279535d7d767>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-50
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-64.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.17 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/