SENIOR Ceredigion councillors are expected to back a proposal to move Aberaeron’s library from the town centre to county hall, Penmorfa.
Ceredigion County Council recently held a public consultation on the proposed move of the library – one of four full-time libraries in the county – from the centre of town, along with similar proposals being mooted for Lampeter, partly due to ongoing budget pressures.
The consultation attracted just under 900 responses, with concerns including a loss of footfall for local businesses, increased walking distance making it unusable for those with physical limitations, and users wanting to shop and socialise in the town centre at the same time as visiting the library.
The town hall, the site of the current library, was originally built in 1846 to accommodate the Court of Quarter Sessions, and over the years it has accommodated many council services, a report before Ceredigion County Council’s Cabinet meeting of October 1 says.
Today all that remains is the registrar’s district office, which will be relocated to Penmorfa shortly and the Mid Wales Transport agency which the estates team are discussing viable options for relocation, it adds.
The report, which asks Cabinet’s support for the proposed relocation of the library to Penmorfa, says the current building does not meet modern standards for efficiency and is mainly heated via oil central heating, adding “it is not possible to run a financially viable library service from such a large building with some of the significant costs,” totalling £44,760 in the last financial year.
It says the town hall building “is in a prime location and will be suitable for sympathetic redevelopment to improve its efficiency and layout to allow business and/or commercial accommodation which can replace footfall and provide employment opportunities”.
The Aberaeron consultation said the proposed move, if agreed, would offer an improved library and customer service along with access to the new Penmorfa Centre for Independent Living, and would also provide a larger space for a children’s book collection along with additional space to support workers and learners including a dedicated work room.
In 2023 the library service developed grant proposals which could improve the sustainability of the library service which must run on a very limited budget and faces continuing inflationary pressure, the report says.
This work was formalised into a successful grant proposal with Welsh Government funding the creation of a new library at a cost of £268,000.
The council, since the grant proposal, has targeted library service savings of £187,000 a year; one proposal, to the tune of £70,000, to co-locate library provision with other council services wherever possible.
It is requested cabinet supports the proposed relocation of the library into Penmorfa with a new dedicated children’s area, which would also reduce duplication in customer service staff across the two buildings reducing costs and ensuring that the library hours are not significantly reduced, as well as “increased and improved equipment and facilities to better help support individuals with their personal development” and “free up a historic town centre building to redevelop and provide new business premises at the heart of the town which potentially can generate greater footfall and economic benefits”.
An alternative proposal is also included in the report: to proceed with the closure of the library service at either Aberaeron or Lampeter in order to achieve the £70,000 savings required from the library service to achieve the overall £5.8m council savings target for 2024/25.
It concludes: “Whilst the library service would like to maintain a large library in the centre of each of our towns this is not financially viable. We face significant challenges to maintain any service and without a concerted effort to develop a more resilient service, the quality of future library provision is put further at risk.
“Should neither option be agreed we would need to make a significant reduction in opening hours which would further undermine the financial resilience and effectiveness of the library service.”