Dear Supporters, I hope you are all well. A library colleague recently emailed me to point out to that Ealing Council is planning to close Pitshanger Library, despite Councillor Dheer’s congratulatory claims (in response to presentation of the Save Ealing Libraries Campaign at the Council meeting on April 24th), about keeping all 13 libraries open, leading up to the May local elections. Sure enough, I noted in the Ealing Today (online) that the Council is proposing to close Pitshanger Library when the lease is due to be renewed this coming December. I seized an opportunity to raise this matter with Councillor Leader, Julian Bell, when I briefly met him (by chance) standing by an Ealing Council stall, at last Saturday’s Acton Carnival. He explained that Pitshanger Library isn’t owned by the Council and is one of Ealing’s most expensive libraries to run. His implication is that Pitshanger is not economically viable. He added that an alternative community space like St Barnabas Church would be explored. ‘Hoping to find a community location for the library’, as Ealing Today has reported, is hardly reassuring since the Council has yet to begin pinpoint alternative sites or put an action plan into motion (http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&page=eapitshangerlibrary001.htm) Only a few weeks ago, Julian Bell boasted that the Council attaches great importance to our library service across the borough, which is indicative of the fact that ‘given the scale of cuts that Ealing has experienced-losing nearly two-thirds of its central funding’, the Council would still be ‘ending its four year term with the same number of libraries as we started it with.’ Pity there’s was no mention of the proposed Pitshanger Library closure before the end of Ealing Council’s four year term or at that Council meeting when I presented my petition! Councillor Bell really does need to understand fully that our diverse communities, made up of local families, children and young people, vulnerable groups like the elderly and disabled individuals as well as those who are experiencing unemployment NEED a LIBRARY SERVICE and not LIP SERVICE!! So dear supporters while we continue to await the outcome of the Council’s decision on the longer-term means of providing the library service later in the year (Julian Bell, April, 2018) - bearing in mind 3,396 of you to date are saying an unequivocal ‘NO’ to the outsourcing of Ealing’s 13 libraries - a separate E petition to save Pitshanger Library has now been launched on the Ealing Council website. Your signatures are urgently needed again and please do circulate amongst your contacts: http://ealing.cmis.uk.com/ealing/ePetitions/tabid/96/Sign/61/Sign-SAVE-PITSHANGER-LIBRARY.aspx Once again together we can make a difference. As Professor Benjamin Zephaniah and children’s novelist Michael Rosen have punctuated, when you save libraries you are saving human lives! Thank you again. Grace Grace Quansah (Akuba)