Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many libraries have closed, opened, or relocated in England in each of the last five years.

As the libraries development agency for England, Arts Council England (ACE) collects and publishes data on library closures, openings and relocations in its annual English Public Libraries Location Dataset. The dataset can be found at the following link: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/supporting-arts-museums-and-libraries/supporting-libraries

DCMS estimates the number of static libraries that have permanently closed (and not been replaced by or relocated to a new static library) in England in each of the last 5 years (for which data is available) is as follows:

This data is based upon ACE’s English Public Libraries Location Dataset 2024, which shows the number of static libraries open as at 31 December 2024 is 2,866. The 2025 basic library dataset is expected to be published later this year.