John Dolan, Birmingham’s former Head of Libraries, gives every appearance of being a very angry man in the open letter he has written to city council leader Mike Whitby.
Mr Dolan’s well known views on the important role libraries play in promoting lifelong learning and their value to local communities shines through the polemic, which strikes at the heart of the way the council is approaching the public spending cuts it has to carry out.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition running Birmingham made a decision early on in the cost cutting process that it would try not to close facilities such as libraries, swimming pools and leisure centres.
This was partly driven by a desire to maintain as far as possible important public services across the city’s 10 constituencies, but also from a political realisation that it would be a certain vote loser if scores of much-loved leisure facilities were to close.
By taking this approach it was always obvious to anyone close to the council that libraries would still have to bear their share of the cuts.
As Mr Dolan notes, the council has a duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service to everyone who wishes to use it. However, there are plenty of grey areas about just how extensive a network of community libraries has to be to be considered comprehensive.
The £2.3 million that constituency committees are considering cutting from community libraries represents 28 per cent of the total budget, so it is inevitable that the overall service will suffer as a result.
Details about what is likely to happen – reduced opening hours, cuts in staffing levels, greater use of volunteers to staff libraries – began to leak out at a scrutiny committee, with the result that the cabinet member for leisure felt the need to correct one of his own colleagues who said it would be better that some libraries open for only two days a week rather than not at all. Apparently, the minimum opening time will be four hours a day.
The argument from the coalition is that savings have to be made and that the devolved constituency committees must make their own minds up about libraries. In the real world, however, the steer coming downwards from the cabinet will determine what happens at the end of the day.
Mr Dolan has clearly touched a raw nerve by questioning why, given the council’s claim to be conducting the most extensive consultation exercise ever held in Birmingham, there is no mention of a reduced library service in any of the paperwork so far released.
He also draws attention to staffing cuts already put in place and claims that the majority of librarians are to be made redundant. How, then, will Birmingham provide library services of any quality?
These are important questions deserving straight answers, most certainly demanding better communication about the council’s intentions than is currently the case.
Paradoxically, Birmingham is two years away from unveiling its new civic library which is being built at a cost of almost £200 million. This is undeniably good news, but must be seen against a backdrop of a reduced community library service.
Critics of the new library have always claimed that the cost of running the building and paying the debt charges will have in part to be met by reducing the community library network. The next few months will demonstrate whether this claim is true or not.
