County councillor confirms Hucknall Library is not going to Top Wighay or the new health centre

Coun John Cottee, chairman of the communities committee at Nottinghamshire County Council, reaffirmed this fact when speaking to the Dispatch this week.

Rumours have continued to swirl over the library’s future with initial talk of it moving to the new council offices at Top Wighay Farm.

Then last month, Coun Jason Zadrozny (Ash Ind), Independents Alliance leader at County Hall, said at a full council meeting he had ‘concrete evidence’ talks had taken place to move the library facilities to the proposed new health centre on Piggins Croft.

But Coun John Cottee (Con), said this was completely not the case and that Coun Zadrozny had only seen draft minutes of the meeting where this was discussed.

Futhermore, Coun Cottee said talk of the new health centre referred to the educational facilities the library offered, not the other main service

And he added that there had never been any plans to move Hucknall library services to Top Wighay Farm and suggestions this notion had been signed off were untrue and that nothing from the library service would be going there .

He said: “The NHS approached us over the education side of the services the library offers to see whether further services could be offered at the new health centre and negotiations are continuing.

"Everything that is the Hucknall Library building now will remain there and any educational elements in a new health centre would actually be an expansion of services already offered in the town.

"This ‘concrete evidence’ that was referred to was from draft minutes that were read and misinterpreted.

"My door is always open about libraries, I’m passionate about libraries and people can always just pick up the phone and talk to me about this.

"Unfortunately, in this case, this hasn’t happened but I can assure you the facilities and services here at Hucknall are going nowhere.”​​​

Peter Gaw, chief executive of Inspire, which runs Nottinghamshire’s libraries for the council, added: “We are always looking at new ways to provide access to our growing adult learning programme and have many discussions with partners in considering where we can deliver courses in addition to those provided in local libraries.

“The proposed Cavell Centre would be ideal especially as some of our learning programmes focus on health and wellbeing.

"Hucknall Library is a busy and well used library and there has never been any discussions about relocating it from its current site.

“Our discussions with the Cavell Centre have only focused on accommodation for additional learning.

"I’d like to assure people that learning courses will also continue to be held at Hucknall Library.”​​​​