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Welsh Public Library Standards

Published: 22/11/2017

Flintshire County Council’s Organisational Change Overview and Scrutiny Committee will be asked to comment on progress of delivery against Welsh Public Library Standards when it meets next week. The Library Service is currently operating a model that the Council believes meets community needs. Recognition of this is shown with 99% of adults rating the service good or very good (second highest score in Wales) and children rating the service 10 out of 10 (the highest score in Wales). However if further reductions are made due to continued austerity requirements from the United Kingdom government then the service will not be able to meet community needs and performance against these standards will significantly deteriorate. The resilience of the service is at risk and this is demonstrated as, while the service is able to achieve good performance with its current budget against core entitlements and the quality indicators with targets, performance across the remaining areas of the framework is mixed. Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Education and Youth, Councillor Ian Roberts, said: “I am proud that the library service has made significant steps forward this year, with planned improvements against the standards in relation to opening hours and access to broadband. “It is great to see the service retains its high customer satisfaction levels being first in Wales in relation to children’s satisfaction and second in Wales in relation to adult satisfaction. This reinforces that fact that we have got our library model in Flintshire right and that we know this model is sustainable against further planned reductions in budget. “However any further budgetary impacts due to the UK’s approach to austerity could potentially affect the resilience of this important community service.”