We oppose all proposed cuts to our city library service including cutting the opening hours of libraries and hubs, and bringing in more unpaid volunteers to take over roles previously done by professional library staff.

Cardiff Council proposals to slash library opening times and recruit more unpaid volunteers is a classic technique. Opening hours are cut, the service is run down, use falls as residents find their local library is not open when they want and does not have what they want, this is then used as an excuse to close libraries. 

Over 1,000 UK libraries have closed since Tory austerity began in 2010. In 2009/10, 80,000 Cardiff residents, quarter of city population, borrowed an item from a library. If libraries are invested in, not cut, they remain one of most used, most loved, most popular public services. 

To cut library opening hours, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, is a backwards step. Public libraries are one of the few spaces in our city that anyone can visit during the daytime for free.

As families struggle to heat their homes due to rising living costs, libraries across the UK are becoming  “warm banks” for people who need somewhere to keep warm. Some even provide hot drinks, free clothes, soup, hygiene products and free sanitary products can be handed out discreetly to combat period poverty.

Libraries are effectively community centres for many underserved residents, essential community spaces, warm and welcoming places where we can meet, read, study, research and write, and where learning and cultural activities can be organised. They are essential for many jobseekers and low income families to use the internet, and also for help and support for refugees.

Our city library service is not just the buildings, books, computers, and other materials they house - they are run by caring and dedicated staff. It's our library staff who make sure our libraries open on time, run the events and offer help to those in need.

Reducing the overall number of library staff could mean less help, make it riskier to prevent or manage health and safety issues, and maybe even make temporary closures more likely in the event of staff shortages. 

Cardiff Council's drive to more and more replace council workers and professionals with unpaid volunteers suggest they neither understand, nor value, the role of professional library staff. Staff promote literacy in children, and adults who have missed out, they often support and help vulnerable members of the community. Temporary unpaid volunteers will not be able to develop the long-term commitment to community empowerment that staff who have supported two or more generations have.

In 2015 hundreds protested across our city for publicly funded libraries with paid and trained, professional library staff. We are devastated that our council continues to attack our city library service.  Our city's libraries have weathered world wars, the Great Depression and previous recessions and survived intact. Labour councils must not act as local conduits of Tory austerity.

We ask that Cardiff Council drop all planned library cuts and instead invest in our city library service.