Tuesday 10 February 2009

CELEBRATING A YEAR OF THANET'S GATEWAY PLUS

Thanet district Council press release

A family event is being held this weekend (Saturday 14 February) to celebrate the first anniversary of Thanet’s Gateway Plus.

Free activities on offer between 10am and 1pm on Saturday 14 February at Thanet’s Gateway Plus, based at Margate library in Cecil Street, include face painting, card making, balloon modeling and storytelling. They can also take part in a colouring competition to win George the Gateway bear.

Thanet’s Gateway Plus brings together Kent County Council and Thanet District Council services, along with information from voluntary and community groups, such as the Kent Adult Social Services and Department of Work and Pensions who can offer advice to the over 60’s, Citizens Advice Bureau for debt advice, the Isle of Thanet Credit Union - Wansum Savers and smoking cessation classes on offer from the NHS. Improved library facilities offer a refreshed and extended reading stock, public gallery, improved IT facilities and an updated Research and Historical area.

In its first year of opening, Thanet’s Gateway Plus has been shortlisted in the prestigious Local Government Chronicle Awards, which recognises the best in local government. Waiting times for customers have been dramatically reduced, compared to 2007, with Kent Libraries seeing an increase in the number of new borrowers and the number of items issued from the library.

Customer satisfaction surveys have shown that the vast majority of those questioned were satisfied with the level of service and could easily find what they were looking for.

Thanet’s Gateway Plus is open from 9am until 6pm on weekdays, with late night opening until 8pm on Thursday evenings. It is also open on Saturdays between 9am and 5pm.

1 comment:

  1. Think I have just read a faity tale there,Gateway is a nightmare..I had the misfortune to visit the Library on tuesday with my grandchildren and a fight kicked off on the TDC side and an old man was knocked to the floor,the police were called and it was chaos.The public were led to believe it would be better with the doors moved away from the court but it is much worse-the standards have dropped to the ground.My grandchildren were crying and frightened.I caught the bus home and most people were saying how awful the place has become and would never go there again-what a shame to ruin our lovely library and they have the gall to call for a celebration..

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.