Campaign Press Release 23 November 2018

After several weeks of vigorous campaigning, the Save Lewisham Libraries Campaign group (SLL) welcomes the council’s recent decision to suspend library service cuts, pending a feasibility study into an alternative proposal of re-developing Lewisham Library. We thank Lewisham Mayor, Cabinet and Councillors for listening to our concerns and acting on them. We posed a number of questions at the Mayor and Cabinet meeting on 21 November 2018 and are grateful for a prompt response published the following day, which addresses some of these questions.

However, many of our questions and concerns raised have not been fully answered, but rather deferred to the outcome of the feasibility study due to be completed in April 2019. Whilst we appreciate that some answers will not be possible to give until the study is complete, there are some guarantees that SLL will continue to seek, thereby holding Lewisham Mayor, Councillors and Officers to account on issues that are a matter of public interest to constituents and library stakeholders.

In particular, in response to our question regarding potential reduction in staffing levels during the temporary relocation, the Council has responded: ‘We will be looking at the staffing levels required as part of the feasibility work. Our ambition is to ensure that any temporary library is staffed for as many hours as the current Lewisham Library.’ The campaign would like to reiterate that library staff should be valued as an integral part and indispensable asset of the new service and building development, and should be treated as such, both in consultation and continued service delivery in the transition period.

In response to SLL campaigners’ presentation at the Mayor and Cabinet meeting, Cllr Slater (Cabinet Member for Libraries) stated that “we agree that we all support a strong, innovative library service” and on inviting our representatives to speak, Mayor Egan acknowledged that “library staff and library campaigners are the experts”. We are glad this has been recognised, and it is our collective expert opinion that the Council will not be able to fulfil its statutory duties, nor its municipal and professional service missions, without the current library staff teams. 

We therefore call for the current number of posts to be ring-fenced, as we believe that this is the only way that Lewisham library service can operate within its statutory requirements. Any reduction in staffing levels will be robustly challenged by the campaign.

We still have grave concerns for the safe storage and continued public access to the archive and local history collections. Whilst we understand the council will look for “safe storage of Lewisham’s archives” as part of the feasibility study, this response does not state whether the library and information service will allow continued access to the archives through any potential redevelopment. Can the council guarantee it will fulfil its public interest duties in safeguarding and enabling public access to these collections with the newly proposed plans?

Finally, we understand that the initial focus of the feasibility study will be on financial viability, and we welcome the fact that the council have confirmed that they will not consider the freehold sale of the current Lewisham Library land to a private developer. However, in terms of consultation within the feasibility study, the Mayor has publicly stated at the meeting on 21st November that it “is really important that those conversations are had with staff and with library campaigners so we will ask that that is as transparent as it can be”. We will work with Councillors and Officers to ensure this commitment to transparent dialogue is held to.

We look forward to being part of these conversations that inform the complete feasibility study in April 2019 and will keep the wider publics of Lewisham and beyond informed on this process.

Our next campaign meeting will be in a couple of weeks - details to follow. Thank you and solidarity to everyone who has supported us so far.