Redcar libraries could close in cost-cutting plans

Roseberry Community Library is one of the sites at risk

Two libraries in Redcar and Cleveland could close, while others will have their hours reduced, under new plans.

Brotton Library and Roseberry Community Library could be shut to help save the Labour-led council £400,000.

A consultation has been launched over the plans, which critics have denounced as a "betrayal to local communities".

But council leader Alec Brown has said reducing spending would allow the local authority to continue to protect the borough's most vulnerable children.

Both of the libraries earmarked for closure are in Redcar.

Elsewhere, the list of facilities potentially facing a reduced service, with shorter opening hours, includes Redcar Library, Guisborough, South Bank, Skelton, Marske, Ormesby and Saltburn.

Redcar's Laburnum Road Library and Dormanstown Library will be turned into community-run venues under the plans, while the council is still debating whether to continue running Grangetown Library.

'Nobody in there'

Redcar and Cleveland Council leader Alec Brown said the the cost-cutting plans would allow the council to carry on delivering key services by reducing its overspend.

Mr Brown claimed to have visited Brotton Library and found "absolutely nobody in there".

The Labour councillor said there were plans to establish a pop-up library in the chapel in Brotton High Street "which residents and the ward councillors are telling me will be more accepted, in terms of being used, because the library at the minute... is out of the way of the community", he said.

A Liberal Democrat spokesman claimed the changes under consideration were a "betrayal to local communities from a party that promised to protect the borough from the worst of government austerity".

Cllr Kay, an independent, added: "The Labour party is just shrinking the whole library service, and presumably there'll be less access [too].

"We never proposed to close either of those libraries."