The Ledbury Library Development Group were very pleased to see that our library will have increased opening hours when it moves to the Master's House in February.

While it is an increase on the current hours, it will not take us back to the number of opening hours we had last year before the cuts started.

At least it is a step in the right direction and gives us opening hours on Mondays.

Some of us remain concerned that the library will still be closed on Saturday afternoons.

We think this is a missed opportunity for holding children's events.

We are also concerned there will still be no evening opening past 6pm, which reduces access for those in work.

Not surprisingly, we are told that current figures don't support these hours – but then they wouldn't now.

With no clear idea what hours would be best for those who don't use the library regularly at the moment, the development group is considering doing a survey.

This would be a considerable amount of work and would take some time to prepare.

If readers would like to let us know what opening hours they would prefer, please e-mail us on ledburylibraryfriends@gmail.com.

We continue to work with the library services team, and we will be holding further fund-raising events over the next few months.

Our current challenge is to raise £300 for audio books and £200 towards a project to digitise historic copies of our local papers.

Nina Shields

Chairman,

Ledbury Library Development Group