I think the point is that the current budget pressures are threatening well used service points, not simply the dwindling or unattractive ones.

The network is seriously at risk, with the possibility of entire communities left without easy access to a library. 

In which case a vastly reduced service might surely be better than none at all and could allow time for developing longer term delivery and access solutions in partnership with communities.

 

We should surely applaud and thank those campaigners who care enough to fight against closures, and work with them to find new and sustainable ways to improve services for all.

Otherwise, where will we find the friends and allies to champion libraries now and in the future?

 

Liz Dubber

    

 

 

Oh, Liz, but this is happening already in scores of councils!

 

Like many colleagues on this forum I can list service points all over the place that are being kept open by Ward Councillors keen on their votes. As a result, there are numerous examples of Cabinet-led decisions to block “library closures”. These councils are therefore unable to deal with their infrastructure properly, with costs tied up in often decrepit, unattractive buildings that serve small and dwindling numbers of users; and with patchy services to other areas where new (and often rural) populations are starved of library provision.

 

This is a perverse situation, in which democratic influences keep open some service points and fail to improve services for the population as a whole.

 

In many cases a better library service could result from properly-managed estate; with overhead costs better controlled; and with a more strategic approach than is enabled by the nation’s existing arrangements for local government control of public library services.

 

The MLA has been saying these things for some time and – in many councils – receiving a positive hearing for our advice and support. Once the MLA disappears local government will be handling these matters on their own.

 

Roy

 

 

 

Did anyone else hear the programme on radio 4 this morning about ‘parliamentary trains’?

These are train services which are maintained at a laughably minimal level (e.g. one service per week in one direction only!) because it notionally keeps the service open when the consultation process to close it would be far more costly.  They are very little used and uneconomic, but running the train is still cheaper than going through the process of closing the line.

 

While we face a prospect of numerous library closures as the budgets for next year start to bite, is there a germ of an idea here for libraries?

Might it be cheaper to maintain a network of service points at drastically reduced number of hours, rather than face the complexity and expense of public consultation over closure ( together with the likely high level of public opposition that suggestions of closure usually generate).

 

I’m not usually an advocate of such reduced opening hours but this programme made me look at them a bit differently. 

At least the infrastructure is preserved for a possible come-back in the future.

 

Liz Dubber

 

 

 

 

 

 

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