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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has a strategy for the development of the public library sector.

The Minister for Gambling and Heritage is meeting with library sector organisations and leaders to discuss the challenges faced by public libraries and their thoughts on what government support would be helpful. Following this, the Minister will consider her priority policy areas in this remit.

Officials also meet regularly with a variety of organisations in the public and private sectors to support the sector strategically. This includes working with Arts Council England, the development agency for libraries in England, on such issues as the collection of national data and other programmes to support the sector so that it is better placed to respond to the changing ways people are using them. On 20th February, the Secretary of State also announced a further £5.5 million of the Libraries Improvement Fund for 2025/26. DCMS has also invested in research to investigate the main reasons why people do not use or engage with libraries and understand potential effective policy interventions that could be deployed by local or national government to promote library usage.