New group volunteers to take on ‘most underused’ library in county first
A LIBRARY dubbed the most underused in Derbyshire has reopened as a volunteer-led facility.
Woodville Library has been renamed Woodville Community Managed Library and is now run by the Circularity Association, a group which provides community spaces for people to gather.
The library, in Hartshorne Road, has become the county’s first ever community-managed library after being closed for around a month.
Group members will be in charge of the day-to-day running of the library, opening hours, staffing, activities and events.
It was revealed back in 2018 that Woodville would be one of 20 libraries to transfer to community-led operations to save Derbyshire County Council £1.6 million. The county council previously revealed that Woodville was the least-used library in the county, with 2,360 visits in 2016 to 2017 – a third of the second-least used, Somercotes, with 6,615 visits.
The handover and opening was originally planned for spring last year but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The county council will provide support to the group, including financial support, for the next five years as part of the agreement.
The opening of the first county community library is a milestone for
the county council which launched its Libraries for Derbyshire strategy at the beginning of 2019. This included a plan to transfer 20 of its 45 libraries over to community management over the coming years.
Circularity Association was poised to take over Woodville Library in spring 2020 but this was put on hold due to the pandemic.
Derbyshire County Council leader and cabinet member for strategic leadership, culture, tourism and climate change Councillor Barry Lewis said: “This is an exciting time for the county council and for Circularity Association and we are delighted to see plans for community libraries really start to take off.
“Chris Baldwin, from the Circularity Association, said: “We are very excited to call Woodville Community Managed Library our new home, and are grateful to all of our compassionate volunteers, partners and collaborators for helping us to get to this point.
Our hope is for the community library to become a safe haven for reading and creativity, and we invite our local community to come in and see us as soon as they can.”
Five other groups are currently working with the council with a view to taking charge of their local libraries in the future, and the drive to work with more interested groups will be relaunched in September.
Woodville Community Managed Library will keep the same phone number (01629 531397) but its email address will change to cml.woodville@cml.derbyshire.gov.uk