Senior councillors say the controversial reconfiguration of North Yorkshire’s library network has resulted in a better service for users.
Members of North Yorkshire Council’s executive committee this week welcomed a report showing there were almost 1.8 million visits to the authority’s libraries in 2024/25, while more than 1.9 million items were borrowed.
The council’s Libraries Strategy Mid-term Review for 2020 to 2030 noted that the authority operated six core libraries, five hybrid libraries, 31 community libraries and a mobile library.
The service had undergone significant change in recent years, with a shift to libraries being run by volunteers with support from council staff.
The changes have not always proved popular with protests and petitions being organised when changes were announced by the unitary authority’s predecessor, North Yorkshire County Council, in both 2011 and 2015.
More recent changes have seen libraries be used by partner agencies and other council departments to deliver services to the public.
Councillor Simon Myers, executive member for culture, arts and housing, said the review was “full of very encouraging statistics” on the usage of the library service.
He added:
“If you see the integrated work that’s been done across services, using our libraries to work with public health, work with other aspects of the council, it’s really encouraging. I think we’re making such a good use of it.
“But we must, even more harshly than we pat ourselves on the back, pat our volunteers on the back because they deliver a fantastic asset for their communities.”
Councillor Michael Harrison, executive member for health and adult services, also welcomed the report.
He said:
“We shouldn’t take for granted the fact that when we were faced with funding and investment challenges across all of our services, we didn’t do what a lot of other councils do and just simply look to close.
“Instead, we looked at reconfiguration, we looked at how best to serve the needs of the people that used the service, and as a result, we’ve got a very different library service today than what we had 20 years ago and one that probably operates better than it did 20 years ago.
“I think we can apply that to other things that we face in this council.”
Councillor Carl Les, leader of the Conservative-controlled authority, added:
“At that time we were told that the decision we were taking was the end of civilisation as we knew it — and actually it’s gone from strength to strength.”
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