Long Read: Kent Library Visits Rise as Physical Loans Fall and Costs Climb

Kent’s libraries gained almost exactly as many visits as they lost physical loans.

Between 2023/24 and 2024/25, recorded visits to Kent’s libraries and mobile services rose by 111,170. Over the same period, the number of physical books and other items borrowed fell by 112,183. One side of the service was growing while the other was slipping backwards.

That’s the story in a nutshell.

Libraries were busier as places to enter, use a computer, attend an activity or join a social group. Yet fewer physical items crossed the counter, despite the countywide number of active borrowers remaining almost unchanged. Kent’s libraries weren’t simply expanding or declining. They were changing shape — and in Folkestone and Hythe, where the main Folkestone lending library remained closed throughout both financial years, the picture was starker still.

Testing KCC’s story

The Shepway Vox Team examined all 24 district workbooks published by Kent County Council for 2023/24 and 2024/25, covering 104 libraries and mobile-library locations. We recalculated each district total from its branch rows, checked the borrower age categories, added the events and attendance figures, separated the five mobile services and tested the repeated countywide membership totals.

The starting hypothesis was straightforward: did KCC’s figures show a library service recovering and attracting greater use?

Partly.

Rather than taking KCC’s headline figures at face value, we tested them against the detailed spreadsheets beneath them, checked the calculations and followed the evidence wherever it led. Where the data supported KCC’s claims, we say so; where it didn’t reconcile or left important gaps, we’ve made that equally clear.

The doors were busier

Recorded library and mobile-library visits increased from 3,100,468 to 3,211,638, a rise of 3.6%. Computer use climbed by 6,765 hours, or 4%, while the number of active electronic borrowers rose from 43,712 to 46,373 — an increase of 6.1%.

Those aren’t trivial movements.

But physical items borrowed went the other way. Issues fell from 2,428,975 to 2,316,792, down 4.6%. The decline appeared in 11 of Kent’s 12 districts and at 76 of the 104 individual locations. Only Thanet recorded an overall increase, and that amounted to 1,688 additional items, or 0.8%.

The county’s recorded stock also shrank by 26,786 items, or 2.1%. That comparison carries a health warning because the snapshots weren’t taken on equivalent dates: the 2023/24 count was made on 4 April 2024, while the following year’s stock was measured on 3 March 2025, nearly four weeks before the financial year closed. It’s useful evidence, but it isn’t a perfectly level playing field.

Fewer loans for every visit

The clearest change appears when the totals are converted into rates.

In 2023/24, Kent’s libraries recorded 78.3 physical items borrowed, eg books, DVDs, CDs etc, for every 100 visits. By 2024/25, that had dropped to 72.1. physical items borrowed per active borrower fell from 12.50 to 11.96, while visits per active borrower rose from 15.96 to 16.58.

In plain English, people came more often but borrowed less.

That doesn’t mean the additional visits were worthless or that libraries had somehow become glorified waiting rooms. A library visit might involve using a public computer, printing a benefits form, seeking help, joining a group, attending a children’s session, collecting a reservation or simply spending time in a safe public building. Footfall measures how often people entered, not what they did once inside.

The rise in electronic borrowers suggests that some reading may have moved online. Yet the district workbooks don’t provide exact digital-loan totals, so they can’t demonstrate whether e-books and online newspapers replaced the 112,183 lost physical issues. The figures move together, but that doesn’t prove one caused the other. The numbers point towards a question; they don’t hand us the answer on a plate.

Five branches carried the rise

The additional footfall wasn’t spread evenly across the county.

Five locations gained a combined 116,870 visits: Ashford Gateway Plus added 37,640, Tunbridge Wells 22,173, Ramsgate 21,305, Swanley 20,467 and Herne Bay 15,285. Their combined increase was larger than Kent’s net gain because reductions elsewhere knocked 5,700 off the final county total.

Ramsgate’s reported visits more than doubled, from 18,191 to 39,496.

That sort of jump doesn’t pass unnoticed. It could reflect changed opening arrangements, additional services, greater demand or a different counting method. The spreadsheet offers no explanation, so the honest conclusion is that the rise is real within the published data but its cause remains unknown.

Ashford produced the clearest split between use of the building and use of the lending service. District visits increased by 42,083, or 26.2%, while physical items borrowed fell by 4,963 and branch borrower counts dropped by 320. At Ashford Gateway Plus, visits rose by 34.7% even as lending slipped by 1.2%.

Tunbridge Wells followed much the same path. Its main location gained 22,173 visits but lost 13,344 physical items borrowed and 335 branch borrowers. More people apparently crossed the threshold, but fewer books went home with them.

Thanet was the exception. It was the only district where lending rose, alongside increases of 17.3% in visits, 6.4% in branch borrower counts and 38.7% in event attendance. Unlike most of Kent, its main measures weren’t pulling in opposite directions.

More sessions, thinner audiences

Kent’s libraries held 17,130 recorded activities during 2024/25, 1,670 more than the previous year. That was an increase of 10.8%.

Attendance rose by only 3,263, or 1.7%.

The average audience therefore fell from 12.58 people per activity to 11.55. More sessions were being put on, but the additional programme didn’t produce an equivalent increase in the number of attendances.

Adult social groups were the powerhouse. Libraries recorded 1,221 additional adult-social activities, up 29.3%, while attendance increased by 11,053, or 36.2%. Nearly three-quarters of the countywide increase in all activities came from that category alone.

That matters.

It suggests libraries were increasingly operating as social infrastructure: somewhere for people to meet, take part and avoid isolation. That role can’t be measured by book issues alone. At the same time, it shouldn’t be used to disguise weakness in traditional lending. Both things can be true at once.

Early-years attendance rose by 5,499, or 6.7%. School-age attendance fell by 13,046, or 22.2%, despite 175 more school-age activities being recorded. Average attendance at those sessions dropped from 28.73 to 20.60.

Most of that apparent collapse came from Dartford and Gravesham. Their school-age attendance fell by a combined 15,443, exceeding the countywide reduction because gains in other districts partly cancelled it out. At Higham, 31 school-age activities were recorded in each year, yet attendance fell from 7,740 to 405. At Dartford Library, it dropped from 6,908 attendances across 53 activities to 398 across 11.

Those figures need an explanation before anyone declares that schoolchildren abandoned libraries. They may reflect fewer large school visits, different treatment of outreach sessions, changed categorisation or a mistake in the earlier data. KCC’s workbooks don’t tell us which. A forensic analysis has to leave that question open rather than forcing the evidence into a tidy little box.

Folkestone was playing with a weakened hand

Folkestone and Hythe moved against Kent’s overall trend.

District visits fell from 256,734 to 218,926 — a loss of 37,808, or 14.7%. Physical issues fell by 7,848, branch borrower counts dropped by 353 and event attendance declined by 1,746. Computer use, however, increased by 1,245 hours, or 11.5%, while the number of activities rose slightly.

The district wasn’t operating on the same terms as Canterbury, Thanet, Tunbridge Wells or other areas with an established main library.

Folkestone’s principal library – Grace Hill –  closed “temporarily” on 21 December 2022. Folkestone had no full main lending library during either 2023/24 or 2024/25.

A temporary Heritage and Digital Access service opened on 20 November 2023. It provided local-history resources, computers, Wi-Fi, printing and a reservation collection point. It wasn’t a conventional browse-and-borrow library, and KCC directed customers towards alternatives including Cheriton, Wood Avenue and Hythe.

Its own figures grew sharply, though from a very small and partial-year base. Visits rose from 2,418 to 7,036. Computer use increased from 629 to 2,280 hours, while physical issues doubled from 414 to 827.

But 827 issues across an entire year is a drop in the ocean for the principal town of a district.

Meanwhile, Cheriton lost 21,578 visits and Wood Avenue lost 20,270. Together, those two branches recorded 41,848 fewer visits. The temporary Folkestone service gained only 4,618, leaving a districtwide reduction of almost exactly 37,808 once the smaller movements elsewhere were taken into account.

The timing suggests some customers shifted between Cheriton, Wood Avenue and the temporary service after emergency arrangements changed. It doesn’t prove where individual users went, however, and it certainly doesn’t show that the temporary offer replaced the main library. It plainly didn’t match the lost volume.

Folkestone and Hythe was caught between two stools. The temporary service supported computer access and reservation collection, while surrounding branches continued to shoulder much of the wider demand. The district retained a library network, but its largest town lacked the full central service that residents elsewhere might take for granted.

A full Folkestone library finally reopened at 14 Sandgate Road on 26 May 2026. Its future figures will provide the most useful test of all: whether restoring ordinary book browsing, lending, events and community services reverses the earlier decline or whether some lost usage has gone for good.

The bill rose faster than use

KCC’s published allocated costs rose from £11.12 million to £12.52 million, an increase of £1.41 million or 12.6%.

About £708,000 of that rise came from premises, £569,000 from front-of-house staffing and £128,000 from other allocated costs. Every district recorded an increase.

On those published figures, allocated cost per visit increased from £3.59 to £3.90. Cost per physical issue rose from £4.58 to £5.41, while cost per active borrower increased from £57.22 to £64.64. These are cash or nominal figures; they haven’t been adjusted for inflation.

There’s a substantial fly in the ointment.

These aren’t full service costs. KCC’s notes exclude district-based and countywide management staff, and some branch entries are incomplete or negative. Tunbridge Wells’ main location has blank staffing and premises figures in both years. Sandgate’s staffing figure is blank. Broadstairs and West Kingsdown carried negative premises costs in 2023/24; Marden, East Peckham and Swanley did so in 2024/25.

Negative entries may be legitimate accounting credits, reversals or internal recharges. Without an explanation, though, they make branch-by-branch cost league tables about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Folkestone’s allocations illustrate the danger. Its temporary service was assigned £369,556 in 2023/24, despite opening only partway through the year, then £208,903 during its first complete year. Wood Avenue’s allocation moved in the opposite direction, from £46,244 to £181,935. That strongly suggests changes in the way costs were distributed rather than a simple measurement of what each building consumed.

Nearly 50,000 borrowers go missing between two tables

The borrower figures present another unresolved problem.

Adding all branch-level borrower counts produces 147,863 for 2023/24 and 144,373 for 2024/25. Yet the county membership sheets give 194,301 and 193,746 active library borrowers. The gaps are 46,438 and 49,373 respectively.

The definitions appear remarkably similar. The county measure covers someone who borrowed from a library or mobile library during the year; the branch measure describes individuals borrowing from each location.

They don’t reconcile.

Nor does multiple-branch use provide the obvious answer. Counting one customer at several branches would normally push the combined branch total above the unique county figure, not leave it almost 50,000 below. Online renewals, transactions that weren’t allocated to a branch or different extraction rules may account for it, but KCC hasn’t published the bridge between the two series.

The polished headline and the untidy spreadsheet

KCC’s 2024/25 webpage says 213,400 people attended events and activities. The detailed district tables add up to 197,783, a difference of 15,617. The page also says more than 79,400 items were borrowed through mobile libraries, while the five identifiable mobile rows total 78,535.

That doesn’t prove the publicity figures are false. Central events, online sessions, outreach or mobile renewals may be counted elsewhere.

But that “elsewhere” isn’t shown.

The same applies to KCC’s total of 6,040,200 borrowed items. The branch workbooks contain 2,316,792 physical issues, while the website gives rounded lower-bound figures for e-books, audiobooks, magazines and newspapers. Without exact digital totals and a separate figure for renewals or unallocated loans, the headline may be right, but the published spreadsheets can’t reproduce it.

Good data reporting doesn’t merely publish the result. It explains the method in language ordinary readers can follow and leaves enough of an audit trail for the work to be checked. Otherwise, a spreadsheet error or undocumented adjustment can remain hidden in plain sight.

The verdict

Kent’s libraries weren’t dying.

More people visited them. Computer use increased. Electronic borrowers increased. Adult social activities and attendance grew strongly. The figures show buildings being used for a broader public purpose than lending alone.

But the lending service weakened across almost the entire county. Physical issues fell in 11 districts and at nearly three-quarters of all locations. More activities produced only a modest attendance rise. Published costs grew much faster than visits, and several county headline figures can’t be rebuilt from the detailed files beneath them.

Folkestone and Hythe faced the same countywide shift with one hand tied behind its back. Its main town had no full lending library, its temporary replacement couldn’t match the service that had been lost and district visits moved sharply down while Kent’s moved up. The figures don’t show that residents stopped valuing libraries. They show what happened while Folkestone went without a proper one.

KCC now has two jobs.

The first is to show whether Folkestone’s reopened library restores the use that disappeared during the closure.

The second is to make its statistics add up in public: reconcile the borrower totals, identify unallocated loans and events, separate renewals, explain the cost anomalies and publish comparable stock dates. The public shouldn’t need a magnifying glass, a calculator and a crowbar to work out what its library service is doing.

The Shepway Vox Team

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