25% cuts to library opening hours, representing £500,000, have been agreed by East Sussex County Council to meet their target to cut spending on libraries over three years by £2million.—Margaret Martin, Chair, Friends of Pevensey Bay Library, 20 July 2016
The council has done a detailed study to reduce the impact of these cuts on users, but of course for some library staff this will mean losing their jobs.
The council has committed to not closing libraries until their strategic review reports at this time next year. At that point another £750,000 of cuts will be sought. After finding £500,000 from staff savings, £250,000 from the book fund, and another £500,000 from reducing library opening hours by a quarter, it is hard to imagine how this will be found other than through closing libraries.
“It would be easy to criticise the council but they are between a rock and a hard place,” said Margaret Martin, Chairman of Friends of Pevensey Bay Library. “The Government’s comprehensive spending review last year set the scene for phasing out central funding of local authority services requiring local authorities to find the funds through raising council tax but limiting how much they can raise.”
“Council tax is a poor means of levelling the playing field between the very wealthy and poorest people in this country, a gap that has grown in recent years. A new study has shown how poverty is now a middle class problem with families struggling to make ends meet even though parents are working.
Cutting back and closing libraries makes this situation worse. The government has abandoned its deficit reduction target because it is not realistic and is threatening to the economy. Reviewing the massive impact of austerity policies and massive spending cuts on public services should follow, particularly if our new Prime Minister is genuinely interested in ‘working for everyone, not just the privileged few.”
Some people wonder if local libraries are still needed.
As might be expected as the use of library E services has increased so book lending which requires visits to the library has declined. Common sense suggests however that E services are complementary to traditional book lending not a replacement. Today’s technology enables us to communicate in many different ways – emails, texts, social media – it has not however resulted in paperless offices, an absence of books, the end of magazines and newspapers etc. Instead what it gives us is choice.
And that’s what library services offer. Furthermore, they offer it with a friendly face – library staff available to help. It is ironic that the government has provided a £1million pot to fight loneliness and isolation amongst older people, and yet it is underfunding local authorities to the extent that more than 400 libraries have closed in the last five years. In Pevensey Bay we are very lucky that the library is expected to re-open on 30 August after 18mths of closure due to flooding and damp problems.
It has been estimated that libraries provide a significant contribution to economic growth; make many millions of pounds of savings to the NHS; and provide free online access to millions of people. More people attend libraries in a year than the top ten tourist attractions combined and even more than premier league football. Matt Hancock, the new Minister responsible for Culture and the Digital Economy would do well to note that a recent study of almost 30,000 participants found that nine in ten people in this country feel it is “crucial” that their local library is protected from cuts.
So, in a post Brexit world where ordinary people are supposed to count, the message from Friends of Pevensey Bay Library to Matt Hancock is “Please look again at what is happening to libraries and reverse the current policy to phase out the annual grant settlement to local authorities from central government.
“Access to public services should not be a postcode lottery dependant on what local authority area you live in, which is what is happening as a consequence of making all council services dependant on raising council tax. Libraries in this country should be delivered to a consistent set of high standards with appropriate funding to deliver these.”
