Emersons Green Library serves a diverse and growing population in North Bristol. South Gloucestershire Council is proposing to cut weekly opening hours from the current, already insufficient, 38 hours per week to only 18 hours per week. That equates, perhaps, to only 3 part days opening per week. As well as the obvious impact on the staff members, who will see their hours cut or find themselves made redundant, there are innumerable consequences that will be felt by the community at large. Currently, Emersons Green Library offers a wealth of essential and highly valued services to the local community. These are delivered by friendly, knowledgable and well trained staff. Users of the library vary in every conceivable way: children, mums and dads, the elderly, community groups. They come from a broad range of backgrounds, including a number of homeless users and isolated members of the community, for whom the library represents an essential point of contact and resource in trying to change or improve their situation. Visitors do not go through the doors simply to nab a copy of the latest John Grisham novel. Instead they also visit seeking access to IT services, legal guidance, health advice, twenty minutes of peace whilst the children are lost in a world of make believe created by the expert voices of the librarians in Rhyme Time. They come to talk to someone with a friendly smile, because the person behind the counter is the only person they will see that day. They come because the doors are open and they know it is a safe haven in the community. They come because they know it is a place of learning, a place of leisure and a place of pleasure. The staff, as well as their 'book shuffling', support and help, they guide and they teach. They are experienced administrators, IT technicians, experts in literature and bastions of the local community. They know what is happening, where and when. They are active in supporting the wider community. They welcome in local schools and preschools. They reach out and visit those schools and preschools and encourage the next generation to embrace a lifelong love of the written word. The proposed cut in hours will render many of these already pressured and precious services impossible. Community groups will lose their meeting place, children will lose their visits to and from the library staff. Seventy-five year old widower 'Bill' will lose the only smile he sees that week and homeless 'Kate' will lose her only access to computing and Internet facilities that give her a chance of finding a permanent home. The proposed cuts will isolate the vulnerable and the needy in our community. They will remove a hub of contact, support and information. These cuts are coming at a time when the immediate, local community is expanding. The neighbouring development at Lyde Green and the further two primary schools and secondary school that will be a feature of the expanded community mean that, if anything, there is a need for extended opening hours at Emersons Green Library, not a reduction. In the context of the parallel proposals for neighbouring libraries in Staple Hill and Downend, a vast swathe of South Gloucestershire will be left with entirely inadequate access to the vital services currently offered by all of the libraries in the vicinity. I urge our representatives in South Gloucestershire Council to listen to the voices of this community they purport to represent; the children, the mums and dads, the silver surfers, the technophobes who need a guiding hand, the lonely, the active, the vulnerable, the bookworms after that most recent John Grisham. I urge our representatives in South Gloucestershire Council to reject any attempt to reduce the opening hours and thus availability of the services at Emersons Green Library.