A PUBLIC meeting will be held to give people a chance to have a say about the future of Tenbury Library.

The future of the Library and others in the county will be announced next year.

People will get the chance to have a say at a meeting at 12noon on Monday.

A consultation into the future use of libraries in Worcestershire has been launched.

Considerable progress has been made over recent years in modernising Worcestershire’s library services to ensure value for money,” according to Worcestershire County Council.

A Libraries’ Transformation programme was launched by the Council in 2011 which has seen over £3.7m of efficiency savings made through community support for libraries, sharing library buildings with other local services, making changes to the Mobile Library service, streamlining staff and management structures, investing in self-service technology and modernising stock buying and delivery.

This change across libraries needs to continue in response to new financial challenges, developments in technology and changing customer needs and expectations, says the Authority.

Communities are now being given the opportunity to play an increasingly important role in how their local libraries are run.

“We want to hear the views of residents on suggested priorities for each library and ideas they may have about which services could be delivered by individual libraries,” said Lucy Hodgson, Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet member for communities.

“Some of those ideas will help to shape our final proposals.”

As the financial pressures grow on the County Council, libraries must continue to evolve in order to provide modern services for residents and ensure value for money.

Services will be modernised including the introduction of Open Libraries which use self-service machines, meaning people can still access all services at their local library and they can stay open for longer. The consultation, which can be found on the County Council’s website, runs until February 2Councillors will make a final decision on the future of libraries will be made in spring 2019. A link is available on the County Council’s homepage http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk from Monday morning and on the Libraries and Learning home page http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/libraries Paper copies are at Tenbury Library.