Changes to Library opening hours from April 2012
New opening hours document can be found at the bottom of this page.
As part of our comprehensive Library Service Review, the decision was made to review and rationalise the opening hours of all libraries in Cambridgeshire. This was motivated by the following:
- A need to make considerable savings in the library service budget
- A desire to streamline the hours which followed no consistent pattern or rationale, in order to create more memorable patterns of hours and complementary hours across districts
- A need to identify a core offer, including the level of paid staff time, which is affordable and which can be extended if the local community wishes to contribute, either financially or in volunteer time
- The ability to adjust the staffing structure to single staffing in most libraries following the installation of self service facilities
Officers looked at the existing opening hours and worked on new patterns, based on the demographic of the area and on usage statistics. The figures for the catchment population were supplied by the County Council’s research team once the wards served by individual libraries had been identified. A fixed number of core opening hours was established for catchment population bands.
Number of core libraries opening hours
| Catchment population |
Staffed open hours per week |
| up to 7,000 |
15 |
| 7,000 – 9,999 |
23 |
| 10,000 – 24,999 |
27 |
| 25,000 – 49,999 |
46 |
| more than 100,000 |
58 |
This will result in an overall reduction of around 7% in library opening hours, contributing to planned savings. As statistics provided evidence that evening sessions are not generally well used, it was proposed to remove these in smaller libraries. Saturday opening hours, which are extremely popular, were retained in the proposals to provide continued access outside of normal office hours.
There are several benefits to this approach including:
- A fairer and more transparent basis for determining library opening hours, giving consistency across libraries serving similar sized communities
- Access to services at different times of the day/week maintained to allow for individual circumstances
- The opportunity to create a more memorable pattern of opening hours, making it easier for customers to remember when libraries are open
- The opportunity to address some inconsistencies and inequalities which had built up historically
Proposals were put to communities through a public consultation in May/June 2011. Over 6,300 responses were received. Where the majority of responses were not in favour of the proposed pattern, we responded by making changes to reflect the opinion expressed by the community. Usage will be monitored consistently and the service will remain flexible and adaptable and able to respond to changes in demographic and usage patterns. Full report of this consultation has been submitted to the Cabinet on 27 September 2011 also includes a report on the responses from those 13 communities whose libraries are under review. You can get the full report here under Heading 5 under Consultation and Community Impact Assessment.