People in Dartford are invited to have their say on the future of the town's library as draft proposals outline possibly reducing opening hours and cutting staff numbers.

The Libraries, Registration and Archive Service (LRA), which is run by Kent County Council, has released a draft of its three-year strategy which outlines a new tier system for libraries which will affect how they are staffed, what stock will be available to each library and what community events will take place in each one.

The new tier system will be broken down into five categories depending on a number of factors, including size of the area which the library is situated in. These categories include Town Plus, Town, Community Plus, Community and finally, Small Community.

According to the LRA's proposed strategy, Dartford Library will be classified as a Town Plus library and will aim to open for 42 hours per week. This is 15.5 hours less than the current total opening hours for the library.

The draft strategy also notes that "if this proposal went ahead it would mean reducing the overall number of staff we employ in our libraries. This could be achieved in various ways, including, not recruiting to any vacancies, early retirement, as well as redundancies."

The LRA will be hosting a number of on-site consultations which will be open to the public across in libraries across Kent.

One of these will be held in Dartford Library on Thursday, December 6 between 4pm-7pm.

Online consultation is under way and will close at midnight on January 29.

When asked if there will be any changes to staff or stock based on this new system, a spokesman for KCC said that wouldn't be possible to predict if this would affect staff at the library until the consultation is finished.

"As the consultation has only just started, and lasts 10 weeks, then the results need to be analysed, then a decision needs to be taken by the full council of whether to implement the strategy, which won’t be immediate anyway. It is not therefore possible to predict the impact on staff - if any," he said.

He also added stock will not be affected if these changes are brought in.