You recently printed a story about the full council meeting that is being held on March 12 on libraries.

Unfortunately, as was the case with your previous article on the libraries consultation, you did not approach us for comment once again.

This has meant we were not given the opportunity to address the assumptions made by Save Our Libraries in Essex in your article and were not given a fair right of reply.

The meeting on March 12 has been called by the chairman at the request of six councillors to debate a motion about libraries.

This is a debate rather than a decision. The meeting is not being held to decide the future of any library or to consider petitions.

The decision on whether or not to adopt the draft libraries strategy will be taken by Cabinet, likely at some point in the summer.

The consultation closed last month and as I have said on a number of occasions, no decisions have been made as we are analysing the 21,000 responses.

In fact, the strategy is subject to change based on the feedback received through the consultation.

In response to Sole;s claim we did not inform them of the meeting, details about this and all meetings are openly published on our website.

As is the case with all other full council meetings, we would invite all councillors to attend and we would not and do not have to notify external parties about this type of debate.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the groups that have come forward who are interested in running community managed library services, which is now up to 47.

Even though the consultation has closed, expressions of interest can still be submitted up until June on our website.

Cllr Susan Barker

County councillor responsible for libraries

  • Editor's note: Nowhere in the article did it say or suggest a decision on the future of libraries will be made at the meeting on March 12.