Essex County Council must not be given any cause to say the Holland people are not interested.

The two large vinyl banners displayed in the village since early December (promoting the Essex County Council consultation process and drop-in session) were organised and erected by myself.

Hopefully this has generated a high number of responders.

I have proved to Essex County Council that data it has used to justify this possible closure is flawed, and therefore makes the whole basis for closure a nonsense.

A number of criteria were used in the published process including whether the walking distance between a library and its nearest alternative is two miles or less; and if a library was within this limit then it scored against it.

Whichever way I walked it, Holland Library to Clacton Library is in fact in excess of two miles, so this piece of data is wrong.

Another criterion recognised the importance of the library service to those older people in possible isolation and used this to score towards survival or closure.

However, Essex County Council chose to use the Tendring district average and not the data specific to the wards each library serves (all publicly available); this substantially dilutes the Holland-on-Sea figure.

In fact St Barts and Haven, the two wards served by the library, have the second and third highest population of “65 year old and over” in the whole of Essex.

On January 29, I updated the Holland Residents’ Association quarterly meeting.

At the full council on February 12, I deposited the 617-name petition kindly organised by the Holland Community Association; put two questions to the Essex County Council cabinet member councillor Susan Barker challenging the proposed closure of Holland Library; and described the high value for money of our library, at just £620 a week running costs.

I have recently arranged a joint meeting with the community association and the residents’ association to explore all options in maintaining our library and fighting to keep it open, continuing to look at providing a greater range of services from the building.

We need consolidation, not closure.

We will be mobilised to respond to the Essex County Council ‘decision’.

I am passionate about Holland maintaining its staffed library service and wish to work with all interested parties to ensure this happens.

Colin Sargeant

Essex County Councillor

Clacton East Division