The “Save Shirley Library” Campaign has joined with other similar campaigns in the town to send a letter to H M Government. We reproduce its contents below
“This letter constitutes a formal complaint against the London Borough of Croydon (LBC) by The Library Campaign (TLC), acting on behalf of a number of Croydon residents, under Section 10 of the Public Libraries & Museums Act 1964. We call for a full DCMS investigation into the council’s current library library plans (such as they are) and intervention to secure improvements.
This a matter of some urgency, as the council has produced a welter of unsatisfactory and contradictory documents just a week ago, for decision on 25 September.
We also invoke Section 7 of the 1964 Act (see below).
We further intend to explore legal action at the appropriate time, on grounds including (but not limited to) numerous faults in the consultation process, which has violated the Gunning principles on a number of counts.
We have already sent detailed evidence to the council (attached FYI) during the consultation. To our surprise, it is still in every detail relevant to the new “plans”, which have not changed at all – except that the estimated saving from closing four libraries (different estimates in different documents!) is even more paltry than the previous estimate.
Our main concern is that consultees were presented with no coherent plan for the claimed “targeted” services to mitigate the acknowledged damage from the four closures.
Their overriding reaction (as now reported in LBC’s own words) was “confusion”, “scepticism” and a desire to be given some factual information – along with strong opposition (66%) to any closures at all – just as strong among the users of libraries not slated for closure.
To our amazement, there is still no plan.
And there are still no relevant costings at all.
As we said in our original evidence, what was presented was not a plan but a cry for help.
This still applies.
As before, some rather wild ideas are scattered about, involving venues and partners still unidentified. Library staff seemingly will be expected (among other things) to travel all over the area for occasional contacts, tailor-make and service collections for individual spaces and groups, all unmonitored, conduct weekly “activities” here and there, plus unspecified “events”, place and service general collections in clearly unsuitable venues such as schools and care homes, and expand the home service – even visiting mobile individuals who currently use their local library but will not use an alternative (40-50% of respondents from libraries set to close).
The library staff are also now expected to start from scratch in October, finding partners and venues, piloting makeshift new ideas, costing and evaluating the whole enterprise and undergoing training and a complete “culture change” – while simultaneously decommissioning and moving resources from four libraries due to close, also in October. This will be a highly inefficient and stressful process.
The result – though we stress again that there is no plan at all, and no costings – seems guaranteed to be an unsatisfactory “mitigation” patchwork of provision that will be an enduringly inefficient drain on staff and funds.
This will clearly put LBC in contravention of its duty under Section 7 of the 1964 Act to “provide a comprehensive and efficient library service” and arguably its duty to serve “all persons desiring to make use thereof… encouraging both adults and children to make full use of the library service”.
We re-emphasise also that this whole aspiration (we cannot call it a plan) is completely uncosted. It seems to be based on spending a projected saving solely from the building running costs of the four threatened libraries – now estimated at either £49k or £54k, depending which document you read. This sum is also earmarked for improving the remaining nine libraries. And we see no indication of the decommissioning costs of four libraries.
The Library Campaign strongly suggests that any projected saving from hasty closures is effectively zero (or negative).
All closures should be put back until LBC produces relevant costings, and a “mitigation” plan that can be examined and evaluated. Only on this basis can a decision be made that meets LBC’s statutory duty.
This letter could be very much longer.
We look forward to discussing the matter in detail with DCMS, alongside the Croydon residents we represent.
Best wishes
Laura Swaffield
Chair, The Library Campaign
The Library Campaign – supporting friends and users of libraries
Registered Charity (E&W) no.1102634
www.librarycampaign.com
Follow us on twitter @LibraryCampaign”
