Comment: We must care for heritage we have
By Cllr Tim Archer
In a fast-changing area like Tower Hamlets it is imperative that what little heritage we've got left is cared for and preserved.
So it's especially disappointing that the Grade II listed Limehouse Library on the Commercial Road is being left to rot. I am heartbroken by its shocking state of disrepair.
The Labour-run council closed this perfectly good library four years ago and its been standing empty ever since, with rainwater leaking in and pigeons nesting in what was once the reading room.
While buildings like this are left to fall apart the council is still spending half a million pounds a year on security, insurance and utility bills for these premises - that's one per cent of the total council tax collected.
This Labour-run council does not seem to care about our past or the costs its inaction is creating.
The irony is that while the past is being allowed to disintegrate before our eyes, our future is being mortgaged like never before.
With the Centre for Policy Studies recent calculation of the true national debt currently being £2.2trillion (or £85,000 per household) we will be spending as much each year on the interest on our national debt as is spent on the police and our schools put together.
At least we can see where past generations invested their money. What will future generations have to show for the money we've spent?
- Conservative councillor, Blackwall & Cubitt Town Ward & prospective MP
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I would be very interested in joining a campaign to get this library reopened: I've often admired it as I live nearby and wondered why it is empty. Anyone else interested? If so I will set up a Facebook group to campaign for this building to be reopened, perhaps for use by community groups or small businesses in the area, for example.
Tabitha Harman
The Limehouse Library was essential for me when I was at school earlier at the turn of the decade. However this new generation, with their high speed search engines, don't even know how to use a library properly. The library's replacement, the Ideas store's just don't do it for me. They are more of children's creche than a library and it is never quiet there!