Henry Bloom Noble Library ’offers Douglas ratepayers good value for money’.

Those are the words of chairman of Douglas Council’s regeneration and community chairman Stephen Pitts.

Councillor Pitts’ comments came as the council responded to the findings of a Tynwald select committee on library provision which was due to be moved by chair of the committee Douglas East MHK Clare Bettison.

However, Tynwald President Steve Rodan told the court that the committee findings and recommendations would be moved in the July sitting rather than June as planned.

Douglas Council, expecting the report to be moved, wrote to all members of Tynwald, saying it was ’to provide more robust information to support their deliberations on the report’.

A council spokesman said: ’Outcomes from the survey of the island’s public libraries, which informed the report, highlight the library’s costs as "total", including central support service recharges, management salary allocation and rental costs for the premises.

’The council’s letter points out that a review by its officers of costs included for the other libraries in the island revealed that few, if any, of these costs would be accounted for.’

In the report, which is available online, the £650,000 bill for HBNL for the 2016/17 financial year was called into question.

The committed said the amount ’appears expensive’.

It added: ’We looked back to see whether this level of spending was usual for the HBNL.

’We found that it was, but we noted that there is an annual support services figure, a proportion of Douglas Council’s running costs allocated to the library, which has accounted for around £80,000 - £100,000 of cost each year.’

However, Councillor Pitts disputes this saying the study looked at what ’was not a typical year for the HBNL’.

Noting the library moved from Victoria Street to Duke Street and incurred many one-off costs which he says does not represent the costs of the service.

Mr Pitts said: ’Importantly, as a result of moving to Duke Street, the council has secured ongoing annual revenue savings of £140,000, thereby reducing the impact on the rate.

’Had all the indirect and one-off extra costs been excluded from the 2016-2017 running costs, the cost to deliver the service would have equated to £9.33 per head for those with free access to the service and not the figure of £14.80 as quoted in the select committee’s report.’

The report compares the cost and opening times of HBNL with the Harvey Briggs Library in Onchan and Ramsey Town Library.

HBNL is open for 50 hours a week, Harvey Briggs Library for 40.5 hours and Ramsey library opens for 44.5 hours a week.

By comparison, Onchan and Ramsey have similar costs at about £140,000 before allowing for income deductions to that.

Councillor Pitts concluded by saying that despite the digital age, the library is a valuable community asset for the capital and the whole island as well as being widely used for many educational and activity sessions.

He added that the council assert that the HBNL ’does indeed, offer Douglas ratepayers good value for money’.