If you offer a service, you also have to bring some expertise and some ability to look after the needs of your users.
Otherwise you become an object of derision.

The public library service has already, demonstrably by its usage figures, shown that it is no longer a service of high reputation, for books, for writing or for information. That is why the numbers of people using it have fallen so far

The notion that, as some kind of replacement, it should offer to lend household equipment about which it is not knowledgeable, reliable or properly resourced, is manifestly to waste public money of which it has precious little for what it is actually paid to do.

The proper conclusion, I believe, from what you report is not to applaud those councils, as you have done, but rather to lament their lack of understanding of what a public library exists to do.

There seems to be a prevailing view that if a library does anything at all, or is given funding for doing anything, then that should be rejoiced.

To me that shows a complete lack of trying to understand that the public wants in a public library.

This kind of support only hastens the total demise of a public library service, not that there is a lot left of it in the UK anyhow.