Letters: 'Library - beautiful, inspiring and precious. I fear for its future'

Crown Street was a gift from the Pease family to the people of Darlington so they could improve themselves and lead better lives.

The council is the custodian of this gift to protect it, not to destroy it.

The library in Crown Street is much loved and cherished by the people of Darlington. This was demonstrated when more than a thousand people demonstrated against the council’s proposals and 91 per cent in a poll stated that they wanted the library to remain at Crown Street.

A sworn affidavit in the 1980s made it clear that the library deed, now lost, stated that the library must remain at Crown Street forever.

This is a council so convinced of its righteousness that it is going to create a smaller library at the back of the Dolphin Centre, splitting the library services over several buildings including storing the precious archives in the multi-storey car park and forcing people to make an appointment to carry out research.

How on earth can the service be better and more efficient when it is reduced in size and spread over several buildings? How can these “improvements” achieve the savings which the council has trumpeted?

Worst of all, the council is spending taxpayers money taking on the people of Darlington in a Judicial Review. How utterly bizarre and wasteful.

Crown Street Library is a beautiful, inspiring, well used and precious building. I fear for its future if the Judicial Review goes against the Library Friends. I hope that will not be the case.

Alan Macnab, Darlington.

Brexit rage

THERE seems to be a lot of synthetic rage being whipped up over the fact that many retired senior civil servants who have been elevated to the House of Lords are voting in favour of amendments to the Brexit Bill to maintain our organic relationships with the Customs Union and the Single Market.

Is this a demonstration of the truth of the adage: “The Gentleman in Whitehall knows best”?

David Walsh,

Skelton, east Cleveland