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 help maintain community libraries in Lincolnshire.

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.

I understand that Lincolnshire County Council has a network of 49 static libraries of which 15 are in the statutory service, while the remaining 34 are community run and outside the statutory service. The statutory libraries are operated, on behalf of the Council, by Greenwich Leisure Limited. GLL also provides professional support and advice to the community run libraries, who also have access to the Lincolnshire wide catalogue and stock services.

The government is committed to getting local government back on its feet. The final Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26 makes available over £69 billion for local government, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase on 2024-25.