TODAY it might sound like heresy.

A councillor in charge of libraries insists that they will stay open and that the world would be poorer without them.

He even dares to say that their staff are qualified people who can’t easily be replaced by volunteers.

Those are the views of Councillor Ian Lancashire, cabinet member for arts and culture on Conservative-controlled Bournemouth council. The council is on course to set a budget without closing a library or sacking any of the service’s staff.

“We have no intention at the moment of closing any libraries,” says Cllr Lancashire, adding that they perform “quite a valuable role socially”, especially for older people who can easily feel isolated.

Being a librarian is a “highly skilled job”, he adds.

“There may be opportunities for more volunteers in the library to assist generally, but there’s no reduction in the number of full time qualified, experienced librarians.”

Contrast this with the situation at Tory-controlled Dorset County Council, which was all set to axe the funding for 20 libraries until campaigners persuaded it to look at other ways of saving money.

The situation is as bleak elsewhere in the country, with hundreds of branch libraries to close.

So why is Bournemouth not facing the same kind of crisis?

Cllr Lancashire claims it is down to foresight. “The reason we’re not closing libraries and reducing services and hours is because we planned over a year ago for the reduced budget funding from government,” he says.

“We’ve looked at economies and efficiencies and introduced them over the last year so we were more ready to head off the cut that we’ve had.”

He is full of praise for the staff, who are enthusiastic about interesting young people in reading, running regular story time sessions for toddlers. The key to keeping libraries, he says, will be to offer other services in the same buildings.

"It’s not just a case of borrowing a book or a CD but you can go there and there will be other providers of services as well,” he says, citing Kinson’s new library at The Hub as an example.

“Although we’ve got no intention of closing any libraries, there is a possibility that we might look at making more libraries bigger, better and more like Kinson.”

Tim Lee, acting chair of Ad Lib – the group campaigning against the Dorset County closures – says this kind of upbeat talk about libraries is not common.

“There are huge numbers of these library authorities recognising that libraries are the easy option,” he says.

“They don’t want to cut services to the elderly and those sort of things so they think they will cut libraries.”

But library closures do affect the elderly disproportionately. They also mean a lot to children. It was recently revealed that 80 per cent of five-to-10 year-olds use libraries.

Mr Lee is “very satisfied” after his group helped persuade Dorset councillors to look at ways of saving branches, by cutting opening hours and finding other efficiencies.

“We hope they really will start looking at the possibility of sharing library management with Bournemouth and Poole,” he says.

Meanwhile in Bournemouth, Cllr Lancashire insists libraries will remain a priority. “No matter how stretched things are, we have to prioritise and that’s something we don’t want to lose, our library service,” he says.

“It’s something not worth losing.”