THE city council is set to provide more than £150,000 a year to protect two libraries from cutting hours or becoming self-service.

Changes were planned at the city’s St John’s and Warndon libraries as part of a Worcestershire County Council review to cut £800,000 from its library budget in the next three years.

But now the future of St John's library in Glebe Close and Warndon library in Carnforth Drive looks a little more secure with the city council pledging to cover their yearly running costs.

As part of its budget for this year, the council agreed to put aside £250,000 a year to fund 'closer collaboration' work between the city and county council.

From that fund, the city council plans to provide £157,000 a year to cover the cost of running both libraries at the same level of service as it does now.

The city council's policy and resources committee meets next Tuesday (June 4) to make a decision.

The county council announced in January it would wipe £200,000 from the proposed £1 million cut to its library budget – which council leader Councillor Simon Geraghty said would mean closures were less likely.

The consultation looked at how close libraries were to each other, which district council or community groups could run the library and looked at how many people visited the library and what they do when they visited.

St John's and Warndon libraries ranked in the bottom seven in an assessment of Worcestershire’s 23 libraries by the county council.

The county council never ruled out complete closure but said it would only close libraries as a last resort. It said it hoped to avoid closure by handing over the libraries to district councils and community groups.

In a council report, the possible changes for St John’s and Warndon libraries included reducing opening hours or switching to an ‘open’ un-staffed library which means finding and checking out books would become completely self-service and would also allow for the library to stay open longer.

The libraries could also have been pushed into co-location with other business or services.

Residents in St John’s marched as recently as a week ago (May 18) against the proposed cuts and a petition, which attracted 2,250 signatures, was handed over to the county council in April.