The way to find out the cause of this is through what market researchers technically call ‘lapsed user’ research . You ask someone people who used to be regular users why they no longer do.

It seems to me we absolutely must do this work quickly so that there is no longer any disagreement … But the DCMS figure now shows that only 35% of the population choose to libraries once a year for any purpose – and that has fallen from 48% in less than a decade .

I believe this is what William Sieghart should have researched in his current study – until we understand why this is happening discussions about governance models are a waste of time – and continued funding has to be questionable – we don’t know if we are spending money on the right activities ( or – to be blunt – the figures show clearly that we aren’t )