MASSIVE cuts to library services in Gloucestershire have led to accusations Shire Hall is "failing in its duties" to the public.

In a dramatic opening day at the High Court in Birmingham yesterday, a legal team fighting on behalf of pro-library campaigners in the county urged the cuts to be scrapped.

An anonymous campaigner has launched a judicial review into plans to shut 10 libraries and reduce opening hours at others in a bid to save money.

Gloucestershire County Council wants to save £114m by 2014 to balance the books but Helen Mountfield QC, speaking for the anti-cuts movement at the start of a three-day hearing said the authority was "ignoring public opinion" and "failing to meet statutory obligations" to provide a proper library service.

She said: "The duty to provide library services is owed to all those who live in the area and unless they succeed in this challenge, many libraries face closure. This is a challenge brought in the public interest not a narrow private challenge.

"15,000 people responded to consultations in Gloucestershire, and worry and criticism has been expressed by many thousands of people. We say the defendant (Gloucestershire County Council) has failed to give due regard to statutory equality needs and has failed to act lawfully."

She added she was aware of the council's "difficult financial context" but said the authority was "blinded" by its money woes.

"The views expressed during the consultation were not taken into account properly and fairly," she told the hearing, adding that the council had breached the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 because of the scale of the cuts.

All of the libraries earmarked for closure must remain open until the conclusion of the hearing, which is expected on Thursday.

Judge Justice McKenna is expected to make his ruling then.

Counsel for the defendant, James Goudie QC, is expected to make his opening submissions this morning.

Yesterday afternoon QC Mountfield said: "If you are going to cut services that affect the very young and the very old you have to have reviewed how it will impact those people."

She said there had to be a rigorous analysis of how it would affect disabled and minority groups.

She said: "If the analysis itself is irrational or flawed it cannot pay due regard to equality."

She also said Gloucestershire County Council needed a better future plan to appeal to library users.

She added: "If you are going to say 'this is what we are doing, it will have an impact, but we will mitigate it', that will not work if your mitigation is about aspirations and things that are not tied up."

She also said the library service provided by Shire Hall was no longer "comprehensive" because the cuts were so deep.

During the hearing QC Mountfield referred several times to other councils up and down the country which had made cuts without thinking through the consequences.

She said: "We are not here today to discuss the rights or wrongs of those decisions or the political context in which they are made. We have to make sure that every single decision was looked at stringently and that the very people who had suffered the most were asked about the end consequences beforehand."