LIBRARIES are to benefit from a new fund of £80 million of lottery money — but not a penny will be spent on books, The Times has learnt.

Instead it will pay for buildings to be adapted for “services”, including Citizens Advice Bureaux and benefits — crèches, mother and toddler groups and t’ai chi, Pilates and fitness classes. Anything but books.

The move comes as 50 libraries are believed to have been earmarked for closure in the past week alone and librarians are having to clear shelves and dump books in skips, despite public demand for them. People borrowed 300 million books in the past year.

Library campaigners are outraged, saying that libraries are about books and bookshelves, not about facilities for politically correct services. “They should not become one-stop shops for council services,” Christopher Hawtree, the author who ran a long campaign to save a library in Brighton from closure, said. “This is preposterous. They’re turning librarians into de facto social workers.”

Margaret Drabble, the novelist, said: “ Shame, I cry. People have forgotten what the purpose of a library should be and what books are for.”

But the plans were vigorously defended by The Big Lottery, which hands out the “good causes” money from the Lotto. While the public was offered the largest-ever pot of lottery money last night, the £85-million Euromillions prize, The Big Lottery is preparing to distribute its £80 million “community libraries” fund in June.

Stephen Dunmore, its chief executive, said: “The whole idea is that libraries provide a focus for community activity, converting the space so that it can be used in a more imaginative way. Libraries are about books, but there are ways of learning which don’t have to be book-based.”

Tim Coates, the author of the library report, Who’s in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service, said: “The £80 million could easily have been split up and earmarked into the priorities the public would have wished.

“Why do the people who run the service not think it needs books? Are books no longer being written and published? Do people no longer want them? Or are those who manage the service just hopelessly out of touch?”

He observed that Framework for the Future, the government strategy document, stated that books and reading must remain at the heart of the service, and that the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee called last year for spending on books to rise as a priority. It estimated that more than £600 million was needed to repair neglected library buildings.

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