Ged Mirfin, one of the Joint Leaders of the Save Whalley Library Campaign and Ribble Valley Borough Councillor for the neighbouring Ward of Billington states that, "I look forward to meeting with County Councillor Peter Buckley, the Cabinet Member for Cultural and Community Services who is responsible for Public Libraries, along with the Deputy Leader of Lancashire County Council, Albert Atkinson within the next couple of weeks to discuss timescales for the re-opening of Whalley Library and what needs to done to achieve this. We are basically starting from scratch because of the mess the previous Labour administration have left Whalley Library in. It isn't just a case of the books being brought back and put back on the shelves ready for the public to start borrowing. It is my understanding that although the bulk of the books are being kept in storage some were got rid of either sold or disposed of - how many will need to be established in the meetings that will be taking place. It is clear however that a scorched earth policy was adopted by the previous administration in a rush to sell the building. Add to that there are actually no shelves, tables or chairs left in the building having been dismantled and disposed off either skipped or sold off and you begin to understand the scale of the problem that Peter Buckley faces. The biggest challenge we face however is that there are no staff to run the library. The library staff were laid off - made redundant or redeployed. Either New Staff will have to be recruited or it may be that the Library is run by volunteers. That and the fact that the library has no I.T. Infrastructure - all the computers were removed and you can see that we are effectively having to go back to square one."
Ged continues, "I'm absolutely delighted that the Library is being re-opened but one of the key items on the agenda in my discussions with Peter and Albert will be to ensure that this doesn't happen again and how the building can be protected as a community asset and how this can be best achieved."