In this, the centenary year of Hove's Carnegie Library, there is considerable surprise that Brighton and Hove City Councillor Jayne Bennett has prevented it opening on Sundays.

I like to think that she is being more subtle than that vote suggests.

As a member of the culture committee, she is aware that surveys show readers' passion for longer hours and more books.

Doubtless she will tell us more of her thinking on the libraries' set-up when the committee meets at Hove Town Hall on April 2. The committee will discuss an eagerly awaited report which sets out details of the public finance initiative which affects the supply of books for all the city's libraries.

By taking part in the committee's disentangling of this complex matter, Coun Bennett will doubtless be well placed to propose ways by which there can be an increase in book stocks and the longoverdue Sunday opening in Hove.

This would certainly quell any alarm that she is party to council plans to relegate the area to nothing more than West Brighton.

  • Christopher Hawtree, Westbourne Gardens, Hove