First ever community run library to open doors in Derbyshire.

Derbyshire’s first ever community-managed library is to open its doors this weekend.

From this Saturday (21 August 2021) Circularity Association will take over the running of our library in Woodville, near Swadlincote.

The library will be renamed Woodville Community Managed Library and the group have already announced they are to extend opening hours.

Group members will be opening the doors to the library in Hartshorne Road at 10am on Saturday and will then be in charge of the day-to-day running of the library, opening hours, staffing, activities and events.

We will provide support to the group, including financial support, for the next 5 years as part of the agreement.

The opening of the first county community library is a milestone for us since launching the ‘Libraries for Derbyshire’ strategy at the beginning of 2019. This included a plan to transfer 20 of our 45 libraries over to community management over the coming years.

Circularity Association was poised to take over Woodville Library in spring 2020 but this was put on hold due to the pandemic.

Council Leader and Cabinet Member for Strategic Leadership, Culture, Tourism and Climate Change Councillor Barry Lewis said:

“This is an exciting time for the county council and for Circularity Association and we are delighted to see plans for community libraries really start to take off.

“Our staff have been in the library offering training and support and the new group are ready to hit the ground running. They have already said they are extending opening hours which is a really positive start and I’m sure the future of the library will go from strength to strength.”

Chris Baldwin from Circularity Association said:

“We are very excited to call Woodville Community Managed Library our new home, and are grateful to all of our compassionate volunteers, partners and collaborators for helping us to get to this point. Our hope is for the community library to become a safe haven for reading and creativity, and we invite our local community to come in and see us as soon as they can.”

Five other groups are currently working with us with a view to taking charge of their local libraries in the future, and the drive to work with more interested groups will be relaunched in September.