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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking with local authorities to maintain community libraries in (a) England and (b) Romford constituency.

Public libraries are funded by local authorities and each local authority is responsible for assessing the needs of their local communities and designing a library service to meet those needs within available resources. DCMS Secretary of State has a duty to “superintend and promote the improvement of the public library service provided by local authorities in England” under the Public Libraries and Museum Act 1964.

I understand that Havering had 10 static libraries as of December 2023, all local authority run, with three (Collier Row, Gidea Park and Romford) in Romford constituency.

The government is committed to getting local government back on its feet. The provisional Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26 makes available £69 billion for local government, which is a 3.5% real terms increase in councils’ Core Spending Power on 2024-25.