Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many public libraries there were in each region and constituent part of the UK in each of the last five years.

The detail requested is not held centrally by this Department. However the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) collect, annually, from the individual library authorities comprehensive information relating library service provision in the United Kingdom. This data includes detail relating to the number of service points open to the public 10 hours or more per week, but does not include information on the number of closures or how many new build libraries have opened. The CIPFA data reflects the net figure of public libraries open in each year. Copies of CIPFA statistics are available in the House Library.