I have been working with Newton Hall councillors Mamie Simmons and Amanda Hopgood on trying to stop the cuts in library opening hours at Newton Hall Library. Labour is consulting on slashing the opening hours from 43 to 20. Such a huge cut is unacceptable, especially when you consider that at the budget setting meting a few weeks ago we gave examples of where money could be saved to the tune of millions of pounds, some of which could have been used to protect frontline services like libraries.

Many people believe that these cuts have to take place because of reductions in government funding, but when you consider that we have proved that £100,000 could be saved from councillor costs, £500,000 from bringing together communications departments, £150,000 from scrapping the County News Council propaganda magazine, and that over £3m is sat there nt allocated to anything. Also, the council is paying out over £1.3m for directors – when other councils do with far fewer.

So all in all there is plenty of scope to find money to protect frontline services from Labour cuts.

We hope to have a petition up and running on the council website in a few days at www.durham.gov.uk/petitions and will be putting out petitions around the area. We have also had 3000 leaflets delivered telling people about the cuts and the petition.