From 1 March 2025, anyone applying for free membership, will be asked to pay a £5 admin charge. (The charge is included in the full and half membership, £100 and £50 respectively). The payment will be requested once an application has been processed, and after free membership would be granted. The payment needs to be made before a membership card will be created. Please wait for an email from us confirming that your application for free membership was successful (i.e. you fulfill the criteria to benefit from free membership).
Background:
The charge is being introduced as once a year the weeding of our box of new cards, results in 30+ uncollected cards being removed, wasting staff time, and being bad for the environment (the cards, which are laminated, have not been collected for over 12 months, and will need to be cut up and go to landfill).
At its February meeting, the Library Committee approved the above proposal for all free membership applications. Payment will be taken by Donorbox.
2 responses to “Membership application charge”
[…] admin fee for everyone who asks for their first card (the first time they become a member). Our reasons for introducing this admin fee were explained in a news item. This applies even to those who benefit from free membership. The […]
[…] members currently benefit from “free membership”. When in March 2025 we introduced a one-off admin charge for new “free” member, some people reacted like this was an outrageous request to make. […]