MORE than 10,000 people signed a petition to save Warrington’s libraries after LiveWire unveiled plans to shut nine library services across the town.
A public consultation outlining plans to replace libraries with lending lockers and outreach services ended on Friday and protestors gave their petition in at the town hall.
Five-year-old Kitty Kingsnorth handed 10,711 signatures and letters from primary school pupils to Cllr Tony Higgins, executive board member for leisure, community and culture.
An online petition at 38degrees.org.uk collected the most signatures of any library campaign on the website.
Protestor Neil Kingsnorth said: “This shows just how much people in the town care about their libraries.
“Cllr Tony Higgins has agreed to meet with us and we look forward to talking about alternative proposals. It’s important to make suggestions for different solutions and discuss the merits of different ideas.”
Cllr Joan Grime (LAB - Culcheth, Glazebury and Croft) also handed in a petition of 890 signatures in protest against the closure of Culcheth Library.
She said: “There’s been overwhelming feeling against the closure of the library. We are such a distance from the town centre that the loss would be really serious.
“Whatever option is finally chosen, we need the library to stay there in a good state and you can’t run a library with just volunteers.”
Campaigners said they are worried the public will not be included in future talks about the town’s library service but Neil said they would keep fighting for residents’ voices to be heard.
“We’re not done yet,” he said.
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