IT is with huge disappointment that I read of LiveWire’s consultation over the fate of the town’s libraries.

As a working class child growing up in Warrington in the 1970s and 1980s, libraries were an integral part of my childhood and teenage years.

My parents borrowed library books and music, and instilled a love of reading and learning in my brothers and I.

I was the first person in my father’s family to achieve a university place and when I was interviewed for my place at Oxford University in 1987, the interviewing tutor remarked on my hometown’s heritage as having one of the first public libraries in the country.

One brother studied at Oxford University while another is a lifelong reader.

We were direct beneficiaries of public libraries.

I now live in Manchester and work in Oldham where, in both places, there is continuing library investment, coupled with an ambitious rethinking of the library in the 21st century.

SUE FLETCHER Manchester