APPENDIX 20
Memorandum submitted by the Friends of
Lambeth Libraries
1. We understand that the issues to be considered
by the Select Committee include:
— various aspects of access to libraries;
— the role of libraries in promoting
education and Lifelong Learning; and
— the role of libraries in promoting
access to, and awareness of, new technology.
2. We have experience, which we believe
to be relevant to the Committee's deliberations, in each of these
areas—especially the first. We are particularly concerned
at the fact that local developments, actual or planned, fail to
correspond with objectives set out by the Government.
3. Two documents are specially relevant:
the first-ever government report on local council library plans,
published in February last year; and Libraries for All: Social
Inclusion in Public Libraries, which appeared last October.
In each of these the Secretary of State for Culture indicated
a number of ways in which libraries could contribute to the achievement
of government policy. For example:
— they are at the heart of local communities;
— they have a key role as "street
corner universities", promoting education;
— they have an important part to play
in fighting social exclusion;
— their services should be readily
accessible to all who need or would benefit from them;
— the services provided by the cultural
sector should be available to the many not the few; and
— the local community should be involved
in developing the range of services provided.
Chris Smith also said in February 1999 that,
at a time when the Government has provided the best local authority
settlement for seven years, unjustified cuts in library services
were "simply unacceptable".
4. These points are unmistakably clear guidance
to local authorities. Yet residents and other users of Lambeth
libraries are at present witnessing the deliberate imposition
of an unpopular policy of closing several local libraries in favour
of concentrating allegedly improved resources in a few "centres
of excellence". The Council's original intention was to close
five of the existing eleven libraries in the Borough (having already
closed two in recent years). The present situation is that Durning
Library in Kennington has been saved as the result of public outcry
and vigorous intervention by our local MP, Kate Hoey; and that
Tate South Lambeth Library has a reprieve at least while problems
over the library in North Lambeth are sorted out. But the Carnegie
Library in Herne Hill, the Clapham Park Library and the Streatham
Vale Library are still scheduled for closure—the last two
in April this year. All these libraries are important in their
local communities. The last two are virtually the only communal
amenities they have.
5. In our view these plans are clear evidence
that Lambeth Council is disregarding the Government's emphasis
on accessibility and that it is doing so in several different
ways:
(i) It has alleged that when the plans have
been carried out, no resident will be further than half a mile
from a library visit. This assertion only approaches truth if
a mobile library (an amenity devised primarily for use in rural
areas and for reaching the housebound) is considered a satisfactory
alternative for a building. It is not, for reasons which will
be noted below;
By examining the catchment areas of the libraries
under threat we have calculated that the Council's plans will
mean that upwards of 100,000 residents—over one third of
the population of the Borough—will lose their nearest library.
(ii) The Council insists that it is not cutting
services, and claims that improvements in the "centres of
excellence" will result in a better service overall. While
it may be true that residents in the vicinity of the "centres
of excellence" will benefit, others will not—unless
they are prepared to make journeys which may be inconvenient,
difficult or even impossible. From their point of view, the changes
are indeed the equivalent of a cut in service;
(iii) Our local libraries offer facilities
which are not only cultural and educational. They are social as
well. Besides lending materials which people take to their own
homes, libraries offer opportunities for research and reading
which bring people together in a socially inclusive atmosphere.
They can be entered as of right by people of different backgrounds
and levels of achievement. For many, especially the active elderly,
they are places of social contact. For students and the unemployed
they provide access to books and information which may be vital
to their future. And for children—probably the most important
user-category of all—they are not just an essential means
of making them familiar with the printed word and with their cultural
heritage. Libraries are also a place close to home where, if space
at home is limited or the atmosphere distracting and noisy, they
can do their homework;
(iv) This is a logical point to comment on
libraries in relation to new technology. IT is already becoming
an essential component of school education and young people will
naturally look for it in public libraries. This is especially
the case in that many households do not have the option of owning
personal computers. Local libraries provide a particularly appropriate
means of widening access to IT—particularly as they normally
already contain the hardware required. Branch libraries would
not provide the ancillary service of training programmes, which
the larger libraries could supply, but they could offer access
to the Internet—at very low incremental cost;
(v) All of the amenities described in the
two preceding paragraphs are of a kind which cannot be replaced
by the mobile libraries on which Lambeth Council is placing much
emphasis. Whatever help they may give in overcoming problems of
physical remoteness from a built library, they can carry only
a limited range of books. The fact that they must work to a timetable
also means that there is no spontaneity of access to them and
that the length of time for which they are open in a given area
is restricted;
(vi) This leads logically to the issue of
opening hours. For more than two years Lambeth's libraries have
functioned on opening schedules which have been inconvenient or
discouraging to would-be users. Indeed, one Council spokesman
acknowledged that "the libraries are never open when you
want them". In the Infologistix Survey of 1995 "inadequate,
inconvenient or unreliable opening hours" were one of the
four main reasons discovered for low use of Lambeth libraries.
The others were poor book stock, poor quality of reservation and
lending service, and the generally neglected state of the buildings,
both inside and out. These are all problems which should be solved
on the spot and not advanced as justification for closures and
for increasing expenditure on a few "centres of excellence";
(vii) Lambeth Council has consistently rejected
proposals that a steady, gradual improvement in opening hours,
book stocks and interchange facilities, together with a modest
introduction of IT in all local libraries, would be more generally
advantageous to the Borough than what it is now doing;
In the CIPFA PLUS survey of 1998 people were asked
if they would prefer to "maintain the same number of libraries
as now—resources spread widely, with a limited choice of
stock and services at smaller libraries"; or to "maintain
a smaller number of libraries—resources concentrated, with
a wider range of stock and services available". 61.3 per
cent chose the former; but only 38.7 per cent the latter. In its
latest Annual Library Plan Lambeth Council quoted a CIPFA PLUS
survey showing the percentage in favour of fewer libraries at
just 32.1 per cent. The Council does not admit the implication
that the figure in favour of the existing number of libraries
has risen to 67.9 per cent.;
(viii) Mention of public opinion leads to
an extremely significant aspect of what is happening in Lambeth.
The plans now being put into effect are the result exclusively
of Council decisions taken in the face of constant public opposition
expressed to Councillors and Council officers at public meetings,
Council committees and full Council meetings. There was no adequate
advance consultation with Borough taxpayers to find out what they
really wanted—a failure which the Council and its Leader
have admitted, but without doing anything to correct it. In fact,
a few questions—reflecting pre-determined decisions—were
published in a poorly distributed news sheet (see copy in Attachment
A*). The answers could have had no fundamental effect on the plan
already adopted by the Council. This plan was largely ready-made
and was not specific to the conditions and needs of the Borough.
It was strong in assertions and expressions of intent, but deficient
in estimates of cost and in researched facts (some of which, independently
established and easily available, were ignored). Yet the Council
adopted it uncritically. The majority party refused even to consider
amendments put forward by opposition parties or by groups representing
public opinion. It is still apparently careless of the injurious
consequences of putting the plan into effect;
(ix) This authoritarian behaviour produced
a sharp reaction, particularly—but not exclusively—in
the neighbourhoods of the threatened libraries. Petitions were
at once organised against the Council's plans. They stressed the
importance to the local community of its branch library. A copy
of one of them, which attracted the largest number of signatures,
is attached (Attachment B*). There was only a short time for collecting
signatures before the Council meeting at which the petitions had
to be presented. Yet some 10,000 people signed. This very significant
protest was, and has continued to be, ignored by the Council;
(x) There is one positive aspect of the Council's
intransigence. This is the stimulus which it has given to interest
in the local libraries under threat. This is already bearing fruit
in the form of better performance figures. Friends groups have
been set up in all the threatened libraries and are doing excellent
work in publicity, outreach, the formation of homework clubs and
the encouragement of more active use of both books and premises.
Yet the success which they are achieving, even in unimproved conditions,
appears to have made little impression upon Lambeth Council. There
have certainly been meetings between Councillor Henley (Secretary
of the Environment, and responsible for the library service) and/or
Council officers on the one hand and this organisation or the
Friends of individual libraries on the other. But the views expressed
by the Friends have not altered the Council's determination to
press ahead with the closures; and
(xi) It should be noted here that between
March 1998 and March 1999 there was a substantial percentage increase
in membership of the Borough's libraries. In the two under imminent
threat—Clapham Park and Streatham Vale—the increases
were 51 per cent and 32 per cent respectively. Yet this indication
of growing interest is being met with closure.
6. The Select Committee is, we understand,
likely to consider the role of libraries in the promotion of education
and Lifelong Learning. The preceding paragraphs will have shown
the great importance we attach to this side of their work. We
thoroughly agree with the Secretary of State for Culture that
they ought truly to be "street corner universities",
spread as widely as possible— and not town centre polytechnics,
far away from large numbers of potential users. Lambeth's plans
fail to meet Mr Smith's dictum that services provided by the cultural
sector should be available for the many and not just for the few.
7. We hope that this account will show the
Committee how damaging Lambeth Council's plans are. They mean
the destruction of amenities donated, in great part, by men and
women of vision and goodwill who intended them to be of lasting
benefit to the communities in which they are sited. Once gone,
they will not be recovered. With them will go the heart of several
neighbourhoods and, short-sightedly, the chances of effecting
regeneration plans which the Council has supported and encouraged,
and of which the libraries ought to be a central feature.
8. Lambeth Council, however, is not the
only authority responsible for this state of affairs. We have
to say that, in our opinion, the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport has played a regrettably neutral or negative part. Statements
by the Secretary of State at the beginning of last year encouraged
us to believe that his Department would lean heavily on local
authorities in support of the objectives listed in paragraph 3
of this submission. A local delegation (including two of the three
MP's who cover different parts of the Borough) met the Minister
for the Arts in February 1999. He was urged to ensure that Lambeth
Council was made well aware of the extent to which its plans ran
counter to government policy, and to persuade it to modify them.
9. This did not happen. Instead, we were
told by his civil servants that such action was inhibited by the
alleged imprecisions of the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964.
This negative attitude seems to have been reflected when officials
of the DCMS met Council Officers "to discuss the proposals
and to relay some of [the Department's] concerns as well as those
of the delegation". For no modification of the Council's
plans resulted. After months of uncertainty, Mr Howarth wrote
on 21 October 1999 to Councillor Henley "to confirm that
I do not believe that the `Centres of Excellence' programme will
place Lambeth Council in breach of its statutory duties under
the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964". He went on to
make some gratuitously laudatory remarks about a considerable
increase in investment in Lambeth's library service (which, of
course, comes after years of financial cuts and general neglect)
and about the Council's aims of attracting more people to use
the libraries. The really important concerns—proper consultation
about people's wishes, a readiness to listen, ease of access and
the provision of services to schoolchildren—were mentioned
only in terms of a "hope" that the final outcome would
be one that "took them on board".
10. The DCMS's role in all this looked flabby,
unsupportive and lacking in any real commitment to the policy
statements which it and other branches of the Government have
publicly made. It has accordingly been treated by Lambeth with
the same disdain as that shown to taxpayers and representative
groups in the Borough.
11. We are mentioning all these points in
the hope that the Select Committee's conclusions will result in
a report which will ensure that the DCMS takes on a more interventionist
role to ensure that local authorities provide a really efficient
and easily accessible service.
January 2000
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