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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government is taking to support community libraries.

Local authorities are responsible for assessing the needs of their local communities and designing a library service to meet those needs within available resources, including how community libraries may form a part of that.

Where a community library is part of the Local Authority service statutory network it can benefit from wider government initiatives such as the improved Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26, and could also benefit from library specific funding such as the Libraries Improvement Fund.

The Secretary of State announced in February 2025 a further £5.5 million of this Libraries Improvement Fund for 2025-26 to councils across England to invest in their library service and fund a range of projects to upgrade buildings and technology. This can include bids to benefit community managed branches within the statutory network.