Thursday 5th May is local elections day and four members of the Save Botley Library Steering Group (Neil Clark, Ag MacKeith, Andrew Pritchard and Anissa Schlichting), will be standing for North Hinksey Parish Council seats. These candidates, who have given up many hours of their spare time to campaign for our library, are 100% committed to keeping Botley library open as a council-owned library run by trained, paid staff.
In addition our Vice-Chair and Press Spokesperson, Neil Clark, is standing as an Independent candidate in the election for the North Hinksey and Wytham Ward of the Vale of White Horse District Council.
Mike Sage, Chair of Save Botley Library, has written a letter to all the candidates for the Vale election asking for their views on the library issue. The letter and the candidates’ responses will be published here shortly.
Remember, the question to ask any candidates who comes knocking on your door is: ‘Do you support Botley library staying open as a council-owned (ie non privatised) library staffed by paid, trained librarians (ie not by unpaid volunteers)'? It’s very easy for candidates to say they ‘support’ Botley library-(who after all is going to say that they don’t ’support’ Botley library), but they need to make it absolutely clear what that ‘support’ means.
With Oxfordshire County Council having been in talks with the American firm LSSI, about them taking over our library service, the threat of privatisation/outsourcing is very real.
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