PLANS to close the libraries/community centres in Tottington, Moorside, Dumers Lane, Ainsworth, Topping Fold, Whitefield, Brandlesholme, Unsworth, South Cross, Coronation Road and the Castle Leisure Centre means that 25 per cent of all registered library users will have to travel to one of the three or four remaining libraries.

The data collected as evidence in the published report from consultant Mott MacDonald does not account for residents who use their local library as a community centre.

For an undisclosed amount paid to Mott MacDonald for this survey, this would appear to have been deeply unfair to our hard-working and underpaid library staff and an unacceptable flaw in the remit set by the council.

Assuming all 13,133 existing users of the smaller libraries threatened with closure who live within 30 minutes of Bury town centre were only interested in borrowing books or accessing the internet, most will therefore have no choice but go to go Bury Central Library which, with its much-reduced floor space and facilities, is anything but what one would call a community centre.

How on earth will such ridiculously small space with so few books left on the shelves, a pathetically narrow children's area, three small tables for reading or studying and an oversubscribed IT suite accommodate such an influx of users?

Anyone with an ounce of brain will know that it simply won't.

The time has therefore surely and finally come now for the council to accept that the sculpture centre, which stole two thirds of the library floor space, was a mistake and a catastrophic error of judgement.

After nearly three years of what turned out to be an all-too-predictable and costly gamble, this is the time to do the right thing — clear the deck, close the centre and re-open Bury Central Library for what it was created for in the first place by the Wrigley family: a beautiful and welcoming place of learning for the benefit of the people of Bury.

Andrew McAllister

Kingsmore Avenue

Radcliffeu