Data reveals how many people visited Calderdale libraries last year

Data obtained by the Courier has revealed the visitor numbers for each of the libraries in the borough.

There are now 12 council-run libraries in Calderdale: Akroyd, Beechwood Road, Brighouse, Central, Elland, Hebden Bridge, King Cross, Mixenden, Northowram, Rastrick, Sowerby Bridge, and Todmorden.

The council collects data on the number of visits each library receives each year, which is broken down into visits for both library and non-library purposes.

Non-library visits are visits to a library building for activities or services outside the “core library offer.”

This includes co-located services or events held in library spaces that are not organised or sponsored by the library.

In line with guidance, these visits are recorded separately and do not count towards library benchmarking.

The council said it measures library visits in this way to ensure accurate and comparable data, to reflect true use of library services, and to avoid inflating performance measures while still demonstrating the wider community use of library buildings.

Looking at data for each of the 12 libraries over the 2025/26 financial year, we’ve ranked the libraries in order of visits for library purposes only, starting with the most visited library.

We’ve also included the number of visits each library received compared with the previous year.

Click through the list to see how well-visited your local library was over the last year.