Library users owing nearly £74k in fines

It has emerged that readers in Wolverhampton owe the city council a total of £34,144.56 in late penalties for failing to return library books on time.

In Dudley the borough council is due £39,752.20pin late penalties over the last five years. While a book checked out in November 1996 is still to be returned.

The figures have been released following a Freedom of Information request.

Wolverhampton Council is still waiting on a book checked out five years ago. It fines people 15p a day for late returns with a maximum fine of £5 per items that are returned 34 days late or more.

Wolverhampton Central Library's Rob Johnson said: "We take every effort to try and encourage borrowers to return overdue items because they are preventing other service users from enjoying the items for themselves."

Walsall and Sandwell councils said they didn't hold figures for book fine arrears.

But Walsall Council said it writes off reader's debts after seven years while Sandwell only calculates fines when books are returned.

Dudley's director of adult, community and housing services Andrea Pope-Smith said: "Library users in Dudley borough now receive pre-overdue notices by email to let them know their items on loan are about to become overdue.

"We have had many compliments from library users since this scheme was introduced during 2012 and would encourage all library users to update their records with an email address in order to benefit from the initiative.

"Five borough libraries are open seven days a week and people can take their books in to any library to renew their items. They can also phone any library or make renewals on the website 24 hours a day. We have made it easy as we can for people to renew their books by a range of methods and would encourage people to look at all the ways they can do this."

The amount owed to councils comes at a time when they are being forced to make millions of pounds worth of savings due to cutbacks by the Coalition government.

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