At tonight’s meeting of the Full Council the budget for 2017 has been passed.

This will mean that sadly the libraries earmarked for closure will be closed unless alternatives are found that require no council money.

This is awful news but as I have said before some libraries HAD to close, the money was simply NOT there. We can argue why this is the case but from what I can see the Tories put no alternatives forward to not closing the libraries, they just wanted different ones to be closed.

The crux of the problem is that I wanted ALL to stay open, I am not parochial on this. For one to close is awful, for 7 to close is dreadful news for the future.

On top of this we will see large Council Tax increase (as most councils regardless of political colour will see the same) and this is again inevitable consequence of the massive cuts from central govt.

Local councillors and MP can moan about all this but no one put forward a plan to keep it open without council money. As confirmed by Cllrs Jeavons and Shires, no Tory amendment to the budget was put forward.

By the way if the cuts continue then the only library standing will be the central one.