Four libraries in Liverpool have been saved after a ‘love letter’ was sent by 500 authors including Frank Cottrell Boyce and Malorie Blackman.
The city’s mayor Joe Anderson said a £27m cash injection from the government’s social care budget would protect all 13 of Liverpool’s libraries for the next year, describing it as “breathing space”.
He added that libraries were “a fundamental building block of lifelong education” and called moves to cut library services “genuinely heartbreaking”.
Carol Ann Duffy and Caitlin Moran were also among those who signed the letter to the city council urging it not to pull the plug on libraries.
The Big Issue’s campaign to keep libraries open and to champion greater literacy has engaged and galvanised, winning support from readers, authors, publishers and reading organisations
