I have lived in East Finchley since 1955. In 1947, I left school and worked in central London doing several jobs and for a two-year period at the Hornsey Public Library. I was not a qualified librarian but needed to work locally and work with professionals and some of my old friends from school for a while. I enjoyed the experience of a local service, dealing with all ages and abilities, which was an essential service for local people who may have no other means of communication.

This is why you must not consider selling or closing our existing public library, which serves a large population of all ages and provides a haven for study in the upstairs area of East Finchley Library for students or other local residents who need some quiet for study or personal tasks.

Unfortunately, this facility has been eroded over the years, with lettings to various organisations, effectively barring other people from fully using the building when it suits them. We can’t fit in our trips to the library at arbitrary opening times. We need a professional, personal service available at normal shop opening times so that we can co-ordinate our daily lives with work, families, shopping, etc. Not everyone has a car to transport themselves and the buses are not very frequent as only one service, the 263, operates on this route, in comparison to three services some years ago, which also went to Kings Cross or central London.

This does not mean that we want a computerised system, without the opportunity to speak to an actual person. The impersonal approach only alienates citizens, particularly the elderly, without the chance to at least say ‘hello’ now and again. We may be competent at using computers but don’t want to spend every waking moment doing this – partly because we are not paid to do these tasks as we would be if still employed.

I have had years of pleasure from East Finchley Library and its staff, and after several years work in central London in bookshops, newspaper library and some secretarial work, I married and had two children, who also spent masses of time at the library as they attended Martins School.

It would be a retrograde step to close our library or alter the professional function of the staff. There are a lot of young families and the elderly in our area now, who will feel this loss personally as we are a local community who value of independence and rights as citizens to use our local library service when we decide to use it. It needs to be open in normal daylight hours, including lunchtimes, plus one or two evening sessions a week.

There should be at least one professional librarian and deputy in charge, as was the case in the past.

Barnet includes the community of East Finchley, we may be on the borders a long way from Chipping Barnet or Hendon and other outer reaches, but we need our local library to remain in its existing building with a great deal of refurbishment.

I would like to remind you that if boroughs have surplus funds put aside, as was recently stated by Eric Pickles, the Conservative Member of Parliament involved in these affairs, these should be used for the refurbishment of East Finchley Library and any other smaller local branches, rather than grandiose schemes in the so-called centre of the huge borough of Barnet – we are in Finchley and need to be respected.

Other ways of converting money spent on Hendon Town Hall could include general refurbishment, including smart toilet facilities and disabled access to the top floor at Finchley Library. Otherwise, ‘shock horror’ for the local councillors: close Hendon Town Hall so they can also put up with the difficulties we face in accessing decent local amenities. They will have to make arrangements to work from home or other difficult places as we have to as citizens of this borough.

You will not be thanked by local citizens if you decide to ignore this opinion.

Having lived in East Finchley since I was 24 years of age and I am now 83 and still living here, I am not prepared to see the erosion of our local services by remote and faceless bodies of whatever political persuasion.

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