'We feel like we have been evicted': Friends group furious over Northampton library closure

A volunteer group hoping to take over a Northampton library is furious with the county council after finding out it will be closing.

Friends of Far Cotton Library has been working since 2019 to run it following Northamptonshire County Council's decision to shut it.

The group was working on a second business plan after its first one was rejected but found the books at The REC Centre were being removed and other tenants 'are being explored'.

Independent councillor for Delapre and Rushmore, Julie Davenport, who has been working with the Friends on their bid, said she was 'absolutely fuming'.

"It's just the audacity of it the fact they didn't even speak to us, they said you can't have that but they've found something else," she said.

In March 2019, the council decided Far Cotton Library would be one of 17 libraries earmarked to close unless a community group came forward to take it on with support from the local authority.

That was despite a consultation highlighting that if the Towcester Road library were to close it would have a significant detrimental effect on children, the elderly and the disabled, a report said.

But there were concerns a community-managed library would be unsustainable due to a lack of volunteer and the costs of maintaining the building.

The Friends group submitted a business plan but the council decided it was not viable so the volunteers sourced a £15,000 grant from the Bright Ideas Fund to support their bid, according to Cllr Davenport.

The two parties last met in February 2020, where the council says the volunteers conceded there is still no viable business plan and it confirmed that the library would shut without one.

Cllr Davenport says they had not heard from the council since and the Friends had not contacted them because they thought officers would be pre-occupied with the coronavirus crisis.

So they were surprised to find the books being taken out of the building recently, leaving them feeling like they had been evicted, she said.

"They said it was our fault for not submitting the business plan but we tried to contact them when we got this grant but because of covid no one spoke to us," she added.

The Friends feels aggrieved as they do not believe they have had as much support as other community groups in their bids to take over libraries.

The grant money has had to be handed back as it had a time limit to be spent by so the group's hope of taking over the library is close to none.

Deputy leader Lizzy Bowen said the library service has been in touch with the Friends group throughout the process but no viable business case has been put forward despite officers working closely with them.

“Due to all libraries closing during the Covid-19 pandemic, we have been left with a number of libraries where no-one is in the building, and isn’t likely to be for some time. This includes the library at Far Cotton," she added.

"In these instances, due to insurance purposes, we have to remove combustible material from the buildings whilst they are unoccupied. This is why the book stock has been removed.”

At the last-ever council meeting last week, Cllr Davenport said the library building was being sold to the NHS but Cllr Bowen did not confirm this.

“The council is currently exploring other options around tenants for the property, further details of which will be released as soon as we are able," she said.