RESIDENTS have said that rural communities are being unfairly targeted in Hampshire County Council’s proposed cuts to the library service.

As well as the ten libraries across Hampshire which could be shut - including Chineham, South Ham and Odiham - the four community-run libraries could have their council support pulled, a move which volunteers say will make it impossible for the library to function.

Currently Kingsclere Community Library, alongside Lowford, Milford-on-Sea and North Baddesley, have support from HCC, which includes the provision of a qualified librarian for two hours per week, access to book stock and wi-fi access.

However, the volunteers that run Kingsclere say that the withdrawal of the support will force the library to close, leaving the people of the village without a library reasonably accessible.

“We would lose all that. How would we manage?” asks Sarah Davis, committee member of the library.

“They are proposing for us to become an independent community library. Without their support we can’t work.

“(Cllr Sean Woodward) said there are four very good community libraries that are a good model, but we can only function with their support.

“It is going to leave this area library-less.”

Sarah points out that the town struggles to connect to nearby libraries. There are two buses a week to Tadley, which remain in the town for an hour - a service which itself is under threat - whilst Basingstoke is unsuitable for a large proportion of the population of the village, who struggle walking through the busy Festival Place.

Alan Denness, who played a pivotal role in the creation of the community library after the council closed its predecessor in 2015, says that the council aren’t fully understanding the benefits of Kingsclere library.

“What they are not recognising is the two main age groups we help,” he said. “Retired people – they don’t acknowledge that they can’t travel easily. It is the older people and the younger people that we are servicing. There is no monetary value on that kind of service. It is age and ability to move that needs to be taken into consideration.”

Alan adds that their consultation document does not take this into consideration. “What they have done is a fantastic exercise and it baffles you with science but they are missing the point.

“We have a lady who has lived in the village all her life and is in her early 90s. She catches the bus, comes in here but she can’t walk that far. She regularly uses the library. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet and talk.”

This view was echoed by Sue Earl, treasurer of the committee.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I think it is like telling the volunteers that you are worthless.

“It is not just the readers that come here for company. A lot of the volunteers are elderly as well.

“I was shocked they would save much money.”

Councillor John Sawyer, chair of Kingsclere Parish Council, said that scrapping the library would be “huge”.

“Here we have a library that Hampshire County Council cut in 2015 and volunteers came forward. The work of those volunteers could be scrapped.

“The importance of that could be huge. What does HCC think it is doing?”

The HCC consultation document proposes that the four community-managed libraries would operate outside the county’s library system, removing access to the computer system, stock, reservation lists and inter-library loans.

It says that a total of £49,000 could be saved.

“Library stock would either stay the same as on the day of the transfer or the community could gain new stock through direct purchasing, donations or working with other independent community-managed libraries to expand the items available to users,” the document adds.

“Community-managed libraries could be closed if the community is not longer able or willing to run them. In this case, some people may need to travel further to visit an alternative library.”

It comes after representatives of libraries threatened with closure have heralded the Kingsclere-model as a potential solution, should Hampshire County Council decide to close them.

Councillor Laura Edwards and North East Hampshire MP Ranil Jayawardena, who are both campaigning to keep their local libraries open, say that a fall-back option could be a Kingsclere-type solution.

However, it is unknown whether the closure of all four of the council’s tier four libraries would affect that plan.