COUNTY Councillor Hilary Cox justifies the county’s policy of cutting £400,000 from the library budget by describing the service as ‘non life threatening’.

Certainly true, and just as well, but which of the county’s services are ‘life threatening’ and why doesn’t she wipe them out instead and give Dorset’s residents a fighting chance of a longer life?

To close 18 out of 34 libraries would wreck the service and it would no longer be ‘comprehensive and efficient’, which is the council’s statutory obligation under the 1964 Libraries and Museums Act.

If you are five miles from a branch library, you are beyond normal walking distance, so you might as well be 10, 15 or 20 miles away. Many of the libraries likely to be shut are in purpose-built, modern premises, less than 20 years old, and all will have had the dubious benefit of a self-issuing computer system in the last two years.

What a terrible waste of capital investment.

£400,000 represents around £25 per annum on an average council tax bill. Will tax-paying residents consider that saving to be a bargain as they watch the slow death of a heavily used, popular, successful and high class service at the hands of a short-sighted, cynical council all too ready to abrogate its statutory duties for what it wrongly expects to be politically easy financial gain?

Ten years ago, Dorset County Libraries were one of the top performing services in England. They will soon, through no fault of the dedicated, capable and friendly staff, be one of the worst.

There is a solution. Let the library management create and administer a county-wide Friends of the Library Service. Well over 100,000 people use the service regularly each year. If just half of those were encouraged to become Friends and asked to make a voluntary donation of £10 to the costs of the library service, access to this important and well loved service could be protected at its present standard.

Otherwise, perhaps Cllr Mrs Cox should consider selling off the county farms. They represent a valuable asset producing little financial return to council taxpayers, and benefit no one except their tenants. However, I have to admit that they too are ‘non life threatening’.

IAN LEWIS, (former Head of Libraries, Dorset)