Library opening hours slashed in Dudley

Libraries will all see hours shaved off their days from August.

Sedgley's branch will be hit particularly hard, losing 17 hours between Monday and Saturday and closing on Sundays.

Libraries in Brierley Hill and Halesowen will also no longer be open on Sundays, with opening hours cut back during the week.

Both Dudley and Stourbridge Libraries will lose 11 hours a week.

Many of the smaller libraries across the borough will now close at 4pm or 5pm on weekdays. Netherton Library will no longer be open on Saturdays, while Kingswinford's branch will lose 17 hours.

The moves have been announced by Dudley Council and are due to come into force from August 1. The cash-strapped authority has been desperate to cut costs around its libraries amid falling usage

Council chiefs said decisions on each library had been made based on their usage.

Many of the biggest libraries currently stay open until 7pm during the week but bosses said that was no longer possible in the current climate.

Councillor Rachel Harris, cabinet member for health and wellbeing, said: "The decision to reduce our opening times reflects a need to reduce budgets across the council in a time of huge cuts to local government funding.

"The good news is that no libraries are closing. Instead we have reduced the opening hours but only after listening to feedback from customers and looking closely at usage data which highlighted when people were actually using the libraries."

It comes after council bosses decided the borough's libraries would be run by volunteers at board level under a move to a not-for-profit mutual.

Sedgley Library is currently open until 7pm Monday to Friday but will now shut at 4pm on each weekday apart from Wednesday when it will be open until 6pm.

It will also be closed on Sundays, having previously been open between 10am and 2pm.

The main Dudley Library on St James's Road also stays open until 7pm under the current hours.

From August, it will close at 6pm between Monday and Wednesday and 5pm on Thursday and Friday.

The same changes will be made at Stourbridge. Brierley Hill and Halesowen libraries will close at either 5pm, 5.30pm or 6pm in the week.

Patrick Harley, leader of the opposition Conservative group, said he believed the cuts to hours were too severe.

He said: "I appreciate tough decisions have got to be taken but if that means cutting 17 hours in Sedgley it doesn't seem to me to be quite the way forward."