LIBRARY staff in Kent are threatening to go on strike over KCC plans they fear will cost jobs and result in a poorer service for users.

Union officials have conducted an informal ballot of several hundred employees working in Kent’s 106 libraries and say industrial action is likely if the county council does not back down over its shake-up.

The informal ballot saw more than 80 per cent of staff support strike action.

Staff are unhappy the changes will downgrade the status of professional librarians, add to the workload of less well-qualified staff and leave users with less access to specialists.

It has emerged that some library assistants and other front-line staff could be effectively “demoted” in the re-organisation and unions say the number of fully qualified professional librarians would fall by about a third.

The strike threat follows a breakdown in talks between managers and unions. Unison’s library group secretary Marion Beatty said: “Although we are meeting regularly with management, it is difficult to avoid the impression they are not listening to what we are saying.”

While staff agreed with the idea of taking library services out into the community, KCC’s plan meant “the public is being asked to pay the price in terms of loss of accessibility and expertise at the point of library use – and no-one is telling them this,” she added.

The county council has denied its shake-up, “Transforming Kent’s Libraries” will dumb down the service and says only a handful of staff are likely to lose their jobs.

It wants to create new “community librarians” who could spend less time working at larger town libraries but more in some of the county’s smaller libraries.

In a statement, KCC’s cabinet member for libraries Cllr David Brazier (Con) said the review would mean more staff serving the public.

“We are extremely disappointed that Unison have threatened strike action. We have made changes to our proposals in the light of their comments and are still in consultation.

"The key objective is to improve library services for the people of Kent and it is by no means a cost-cutting exercise or a ‘dumbing-down’ of the library service,” he said.

Unions are due to decide tomorrow (Tuesday) whether to press ahead with a formal ballot.