Chiswick Library Could Open Sundays: Say So by 20 October

Hounslow Council wants to know when you would use your local library, and it has until 20 October to find out. The council opened a survey on 25 August on plans to open all eleven of its community hub and libraries for longer, using a card-entry system that would let registered members in when no staff are on site.

Chiswick Library on Duke’s Avenue is one of the eleven. So are Brentford, Isleworth and Osterley.

The money is already committed. Cabinet agreed unanimously on 14 July to approve £1.2m of capital spending on the scheme, and to release £170,000 of it straight away for the engagement and design work now under way. What is not settled is which buildings get the technology, and what hours they open.

What is actually being proposed

The council calls it self-access. In its business case it means:

• two sets of opening hours per site: conventional staffed hours, plus self-access hours when the building is open only to registered members and monitored by CCTV
• entry by library card, after an induction covering the rules and what to do in an emergency
• study space, books, computers and printing available during those extra hours
• community and voluntary groups able to book rooms outside working hours
• staffed hours staying as they are, with staff redeployed to helping people rather than opening up

The council says the model could increase the total hours its libraries are open by as much as 80 per cent, which it puts at up to 19,000 extra hours of access a year across the borough. Both figures are its own estimates, and both are described in the business case as assumptions still to be tested.

Chiswick is one of the better-served ones. Brentford is not

This is where the borough-wide framing hides the local picture. Chiswick Library is open six days a week and closed only on Sundays. Brentford Library, about two miles west, is shut on Wednesdays and Fridays as well.

Counted from the council’s own directory of opening hours, this is how the eleven sites stand today:

Between them the eleven buildings are open on 54 days a week out of a possible 77. Six of the eleven are shut three days a week. That matches what the council’s own briefing note says: “several of our libraries are closed on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays”, and it is those days self-access is meant to fill.

Add up the published times and Chiswick has 53 staffed hours a week, including two late evenings, Monday and Thursday until 8pm. Brentford has 37, plus a separate community hub session on Friday mornings from 10am to 2pm even though the library itself is closed that day.

So the gain in Chiswick would most likely be Sundays and early mornings. The gain in Brentford, Isleworth and Osterley would be the two weekdays they currently lose.

What the council is not promising

Read the FAQ before you fill in the survey. Three things in it matter.

No site is guaranteed the upgrade. The council says the locations that get self-access will be decided after a risk assessment of each building and after this engagement, and that all eleven are “being considered”. Buildings spread over several floors may end up with the upper floors closed during unstaffed hours.

Under-16s cannot go in alone. During self-access hours a child under 16 can only enter with a parent or guardian who is themselves registered. The council proposes that 16 and 17 year olds could register with a parent’s permission, and says it will look at whether GCSE students who are still 15 can be let in to revise.

Toilets may be locked. The council says private areas that CCTV cannot monitor, toilets included, will need to be secured, and that each site will take its own approach.

There is also a financial motive the news release does not mention. The business case says the change was developed during the 2026/27 budget process “with a commitment made to making financial savings from a new operating model for Libraries”, and that self-access “presents a future opportunity to realise a potential saving”. Cabinet was told no library would close and that staffed hours would not be cut. Councillor Ajmer Grewal, cabinet member for communities, culture and safety, told members the proposal would “enhance, not reduce” the buildings.

Because no library is closing, this is not a statutory library consultation. The council has told the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about the plan, as it must under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, but it is not legally obliged to run a formal consultation on it.

The dates that matter

• Survey open now, closes Tuesday 20 October. Online, or on paper from any library counter, or posted to Community Hub and Library Service, Hounslow House, 7 Bath Road, Hounslow TW3 3EB
• Chiswick Area Forum, Wednesday 16 September, Chiswick Town Hall, Heathfield Terrace, W4 4JN
• Brentford and Syon Area Forum, Monday 21 September, Brentford Free Church, Boston Manor Road, TW8 8DW
• Chiswick Library pop-up, Tuesday 22 September, 1.30pm to 3.30pm
• Isleworth Library pop-up, Tuesday 13 October, 3pm to 5pm
• Osterley Library pop-up, Monday 19 October, 11am to 1pm
• Brentford Library pop-up, Tuesday 20 October, 11am to 1pm, the same day the survey closes
• Online meeting, Wednesday 14 October, 6pm to 7pm, register by emailing consult@hounslow.gov.uk

After that, the council’s published timetable runs:

• risk assessments and a suitability check per site, September 2026
• design refined against the engagement findings, October 2026
• costs and design signed off site by site, November 2026
• building and equipment upgrades begin, January 2027
• first self-access libraries go live, April 2027
• rollout across the remaining upgraded sites, April to September 2027

What it means for you

If you use Chiswick Library, the practical question the survey is asking is whether you would come on a Sunday, or before 9.30am, and whether you would be comfortable in the building with no staff there. Answering it is the only way the council finds out that Chiswick’s gap is the Sunday rather than a midweek day.

If you use Brentford, Isleworth or Osterley, the stakes are higher: those buildings are shut for two full weekdays, and self-access is the only proposal on the table that would reopen them.

If you rely on staff help, with forms, with a computer, with reading, say so. The council says staffed hours will not change, but the survey is where that assumption gets tested against how people actually use the buildings.

If you run a local group looking for a room in the evening, the council is explicitly asking. Community and voluntary organisations are being offered space during self-access hours, and the design of that offer has not been fixed.

You need a full library membership with your identity and address verified before you can register for self-access, so if you have let a card lapse, that is worth sorting out now rather than in 2027.

Chiswick Today covers council decisions as they are taken. See our Chiswick planning news page for what is being built and decided across W4, and things to do in Chiswick for what is on locally.