We’ve presented the petition to the Town Council!

Thank you everyone for supporting this campaign. We have had over 675 signatories which is amazing!

On Tuesday 21st July I attended the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield Full Council session where our petition was presented to the Council.

Whilst Cllr Ward was sympathetic to our request, and noted the success the Town Council has had taking on the Boldmere, Mere Green and Wyndley libraries, he was keen to emphasise that providing a new library service for the town centre had to be ‘sustainable’.

It was his and his fellow Conservative Councillor’s view that it would be better to wait for the owners of the Gracechurch Shopping centre to bring forward their redevelopment plans and use the Section 106 payment to progress plans for a new library within a new heritage centre.

Considering that the owners of the Gracechurch Centre have put their redevelopment plans on hold for now - and I hear any redevelopment is now expected to be significantly scaled back - I think it’s fair to assume that it’s unlikely that we will be seeing any progress on a new town library in the near future. 

This is of course disappointing news, but I hear that the new Lib Dem/Green run City Council are looking at options for funding the replacement of some of the lost City Council library services which could include Sutton Coldfield town centre. 

Let’s see where that gets to, but I’ll keep looking at options to bring this vital service back for residents and I hope I can count on your support to do just that in the future. 

Best wishes,

Joe Blenkinsop