SAVE OUR PUBLIC SERVICES FROM BUNGLING BUREAUCRATS AND PETTY MINDED COUNCIL OFFICERS

Glencairn House front and back views.jpg 2

NHS Scotland Photo Library Stock photos of OT’s working at Law House, Carluke. Picture by John Young / www.YoungMedia.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)7788 438623 All images © www.YoungMedia.co.uk All other rights are reserved. Use in any other context is expressly prohibited without prior permission.

NHS Scotland Photo Library Stock photos of OT’s working at Law House, Carluke. Picture by John Young / http://www.YoungMedia.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)7788 438623 All images © http://www.YoungMedia.co.uk All other rights are reserved. Use in any other context is expressly prohibited without prior permission.

The official opening of the hugely expensive project to have Glencairn House transformed into a new public lending library and local museum has been delayed.

The West Dunbartonshire Council project, financed from a £20 million levelling up grant under the Boris Johnson Conservative government, is claimed to have been hit with “technical issues”.

The claimed £7.2 million contract – although the final bill is expected to be much greater if other projects are anything to go by – will see Glencairn House, a B-listed building, one of the first structures ever to have been built in Dumbarton in the middle of last century, turned into a new public lending library and local history museum for the town.

The project has been received unenthusiastically by council taxpayers who feel the existing library in Strathleven Place is more than sufficient for public requirements.

A children’s library extension to the main premises, built on the old public toilet site between the Quay Pend and Quay Street, which is an unusual construction built with green tiles next door to a facility for drug addicts, has been met with public derision.

A meeting of West Dunbartonshire Council’s Infrastructure Regeneration and Economic Development (IRED) committee, about which The Democrat, on the back of a lie or a misunderstanding and no inquiry to establish the truth of the matter, is banned from asking questions, is said to have heard that the initial completion date for the project was July last year.

But delays in completion of the project, which have caused anger amongst local motorists who have lost car parking spaces to construction vehicles and equipment being used on the Glencairn site, have led to criticism.

There have also been concerns raised over the impact of library services in the town, which are much loved by the staff and public users.

The move of services there, which have included Bookbug, Storytime, and Lego sessions for younger citizens, brought criticism from users when the move was mooted earlier this year.

The council was forced to do yet another U-turn before the management team and elected members relented and restored them until the Glencairn House project was finished, which may be some time now.

The latest update from the Council about the delay to the public opening is said to be “in the spring,” which will remind local people of the old joke to the person applying for a job with the council was told to come back in the spring and whose swift reply was: “What do you think I am … a feckin daffodil?”

This picture montage is of the services provided by the staff for the much-loved West Dunbartonshire Library service, for which the council has been much criticised for making so many budget cuts, including the closures and reduced services at so many libraries. The picture above is of the Labour politicians who voted to close Balloch Library with the support of the SNP and others. Some of them have since jumped the political dyke and become Independents.
The picture at the top of the page is of the current library at Strathleven Place in Dumbarton, which the public believes to be perfectly adequate.