I JOIN wholeheartedly with every- one in celebrating the saving of Cinderford Library and in my praise for all who put the work in to get this result. However, I am certain that I am not alone in concluding that we were all set up as an Aunt Sally, required to jump through hoops and turn double somersaults to protect Cinderford, which the county council knew perfectly well that reliably stroppy Foresters would not stand for seeing closed, in order to distract us from the other threatened Forest libraries.
While the champagne was absolutely rightly cracked open in Cinderford (my heartfelt thanks to all who lost sleep to achieve this result), who knows whether it was not also being cracked open somewhere in county council headquarters on the grounds that they had got away with a deal for a Library Express instead of a 10th core library?
Meanwhile, what remains blatantly apparent is that the county council has undertaken no surveys whatsoever of access and parking facilities at Cinderford and Newent to cater for vulnerable groups, namely the elderly, the disabled, young mothers (or indeed fathers) trying to manage a library visit with two or three small children in tow, if Mitcheldean closes.
As it happens Mitcheldean has perfect and safe, if not enormous, parking facilities for just these groups so dear to the county council's heart. Library access in one to three minutes, or a little longer if you have a wheelchair to unpack.
Consider Cinderford library: its parking facilities in front are completely laughable.
Access for most vulnerable people has to come from the Co-Op car-park from which safety, never mind weight of books, is problematical and for some within these groups downright impossible.
As for Newent with its perennial traffic problems, the library car-park is again small and no-one could seriously contemplate that the vulnerable groups outlined above should have to make their perilous way up and down from the big car park by the lake while loaded down with library books.
Before the council comes to a final decision I would urge that every single member of its heartless inner cabinet should, on a Saturday morning, put themselves in the shoes of the vulnerable, and in that frame of mind do these journeys on foot themselves from the car parks they wish to force the vulnerable to use. Unless, by a fluke, a space should be available in the wholly inadequate library car parks of Cinderford and Newent. If they did so, they might realise precisely why Mitcheldean is a very popular library that they should continue to maintain under council auspices.
Anna Wilson
Mitcheldean