Hinckley Launches Free Book Exchange for National Year of Reading

A free book exchange has launched in Hinckley town centre as part of the National Year of Reading — and you don’t need to bring a book to take one. Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council has set up the swap at the Hinckley Leisure Centre reception for the Easter holidays, with plans to bring it to events across the town throughout 2026.

The scheme covers all ages and all appropriate books — from picture books for toddlers to novels for adults looking for something to read over the bank holiday. There are no strings attached: residents can simply pick up a book they fancy, leave one if they have one to spare, or do both. The council has been clear that you are not required to donate in order to take.

The National Year of Reading is a UK-wide campaign commissioned by the Department for Education and delivered by the National Literacy Trust, designed to reverse a long-term decline in reading for pleasure among children and adults alike. Its public-facing slogan — “Go All In” — is built on the idea of connecting reading to the things people already enjoy: sport, music, food, gaming, local history.

Where the Hinckley Book Exchange Will Appear

After the Easter school holidays, the book exchange moves out of the leisure centre and into Hinckley’s packed calendar of free outdoor events. The confirmed stops include:

St George’s Day celebrations — Saturday 25 April, Argents Mead, 10am–2pm
Feast Hinckley — Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 August, the town’s popular two-day food festival
Snap Dragon — Monday 3 to Wednesday 5 August, the three-day children and families festival

The borough council confirmed that the exchange will also appear at other town centre events throughout the year, though the full schedule has not yet been published. Anyone attending any of these events will be able to browse the exchange freely.

The Reading Crisis Behind the Campaign

The National Year of Reading is not just a nice idea — it is a response to some genuinely alarming figures. According to the National Literacy Trust’s most recent Annual Literacy Survey, only one in three children and young people aged eight to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their spare time in 2025 — the lowest figure since the trust started tracking it twenty years ago. That represents a 36% fall in reading enjoyment since 2005.

Daily reading habits are in an even steeper decline. Just one in five children in that age group reported reading something every day in 2025. Among younger children aged five to eight, almost two thirds still said they enjoyed reading — but even that figure fell by more than two percentage points in a single year.

Cllr Mark Bools, Deputy Leader of Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, said: “I encourage everyone to get involved and swap your books throughout the year. The statistics from the National Literacy Trust show that only a third of kids aged eight to 18 enjoy reading in their spare time. I think this is a great shame as books can be such a great spark of imagination and creativity for youngsters. They are a great way for teenagers and adults to relax and escape too. We are all guilty of spending too much time on our screens and getting lost in a good book can help bring our screen time down.”

What This Really Means

Let’s be honest about what a free book exchange at a leisure centre can and cannot do. It will not, on its own, reverse two decades of declining reading enjoyment among children. Nothing that fits on a folding table will manage that.

But that is not really the point. The point is that a free, no-obligation book swap at a community event is exactly the kind of low-barrier intervention that actually works on the ground. You’re already at Snap Dragon with your kids. You’re already in the queue at the leisure centre. The books are just there. Someone picks one up. Maybe they read it. Maybe it sparks something.

The National Year of Reading campaign has been thoughtfully designed — its central insight is that nagging people about the virtues of reading has never worked. Connecting books to things people already enjoy, and making them available in the places people already go, is a far smarter approach. Hinckley and Bosworth’s book exchange is a modest but perfectly pitched example of that thinking in action.

What is slightly frustrating is the lack of ambition in the announcement. A single exchange point, appearing at a handful of events over the year, is a start — but Hinckley is a town of around 45,000 people. There are communities across the borough — in Burbage, Earl Shilton, Barwell — where a permanent little free library or a regular book swap would be just as welcome and just as easy to organise. If the borough council genuinely wants to make a dent in the literacy figures, it needs to think beyond the town centre and beyond the events calendar.

That said, the scheme is free, it is open to everyone, and it asks nothing of participants. In a world where every community initiative seems to come with a form to fill in or a donation to make, that deserves to be recognised. Get yourself down to the leisure centre over Easter, or catch the exchange at St George’s Day on 25 April. Grab something to read. You might be surprised.

Have Your Say

Have you already picked up a book from the exchange, or are you planning to head along to one of the Hinckley events this year? Do you think the borough council should be doing more to promote reading across the wider Hinckley and Bosworth area, not just in the town centre? Leave a comment below — and if you want to keep up with community news from across Hinckley and Leicestershire, sign up for free local updates and we’ll make sure you don’t miss a thing.