COUNCIL bosses have ruled out more library closures in the county.

But money could be saved by cutting library opening hours instead.

On Monday, a report to the county council's cabinet, which raised the spectre of seven more closures in a year's time in addition to the eight already agreed, was withdrawn by leader Cllr David Shakespeare.

Cllr Shakespeare told the Free Press: "It is not going to happen."

He said there had been a review of the library service looking at money-saving options, but cabinet members felt they had not had enough discussion about what was a complicated report to decide anything on Monday.

"But we have definitely ruled out the closure of seven libraries," he said.

"We don't want to close libraries to save money."

He said that the decision to close the other eight libraries was because not enough people used them not to cut costs. Money saved was going back into the service.

The eight include libraries at Micklefield, Little Chalfont, Chalfont St Giles and West Wycombe, where campaigners have been given until August to come up with plans to run them as community libraries at no cost to the council.

If they cannot do this the libraries will shut in October.

Earlier this year the Free Press warned that more libraries faced the chop. That threat was lifted for the current year but was still there for 2007/8 in the report to the cabinet.

Geoff Allen, in charge of the county's culture and learning service, told the Free Press he had flagged it up as something cabinet members needed to pay attention to as part of the budget making process in the autumn.

The council would either have to close libraries or find the money from somewhere else.

Somewhere else could mean cutting the opening hours of some libraries by up to 16 hours a week.

The 28 libraries would be put into four tiers with different basic hours.

The two biggest libraries, Wycombe and Aylesbury, would be open for a minimum of 50 hours a week, area libraries such as Beaconsfield would be open for 40 hours, town libraries, such as Princes Risborough, for 26, and local libraries, such as Castlefield in High Wycombe, for between 15 and 25 hours.

One of the cabinet, Cllr Rodney Royston, said libraries in tier four would just get a paperback service, when what people wanted was hard backs and reference books.

"I don't like what I see. This sort of paperback service is not what my people want," he said.