Suffolk library campaigners "do the impossible" and reveal lack of support for community run libraries

Amongst the large number of papers produced by Suffolk County Council in preparation for next week's Cabinet decision on libraries there is a paper for Cabinet analysing the consultation results. Appendix 1 of the Library Service for the Future paper is the document.

This paper produces a graph showing the results from the consultation on "ideas or interest in running libraries in the future", here is the graph:

Click graph to see larger

There is a strange caption under the graph stating:

NB The chart above does not include the response “Maintain as is”. This received 3099 out of the 3893 responses and therefore made a meaningful graph-based representation with the other responses impossible

Yesterday Suffolk wordblog produced a post analysing this data in more detail. Suffolk are already admitting that nearly 80% of people wanted "to keep the service the way it is". Wordblog shows that in fact only 2.6% of people wanted libraries run by community groups as Suffolk suggested.

Out of 3,839 people responding, online or by completing paper forms, 3,099 (four out of five) simply stated they wanted libraries to continue to be run as they are by the county council. 

Of the remaining 794 responses most suggested savings or fund raising ideas for the existing service. 

Only 102 supported community groups: 2.6% of responses.

This prompted library campaigners to raise to the challenge and we have been able to "do the impossible" and produce a graph to show this data.

Click graph to see larger

This, clearly, was not impossible and in fact wasn't even difficult. It's almost as if Suffolk were trying to hide the data in some way....