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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 14 March 2017 to Question 67236, on public libraries: complaints, if she will publish the number of complaints that (a) have and (b) have not been treated as formal by local authority area in each year since 2010.

Since 2010, the Department has investigated 15 local authorities in response to complaints raised about whether an authority is failing to carry out its duties imposed on it, by or under, the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964.

Not every item of correspondence received about library service changes or library closures is treated as a complaint within scope of section 10(1)(a) of the 1964 Act. Correspondence that is considered trivial, vexatious or lacking in evidence would be considered as not falling within the scope of section 10(1)(a). The Department does not maintain records of the number of correspondence received about library service changes for each local authority in England.