The Unfeasible Study Rumbled! Demand better and take action

What's Going On

Libraries in Lewisham face a cut of almost half a million pounds to their annual budget starting in the new financial year beginning this April. Protest in 2018 led to council’s own committees rejecting the whole range of proposed plans for how the cut could be structured. We believe any cut to the service would disproportionately affect vulnerable people and protected groups. This affect was acknowledged as inherent in every option of the cut put forward, and its the reason why all options were referenced back by council's committee. Council then declared the cut ‘on hold’ which is misleading as it remains on the same schedule as always in their financial plan. Council said they were waiting to share their plans until a feasibility study into construction work at Lewisham Library was sufficiently advanced or finished.

The timing means that public consultation can only be a mere afterthought: consider that pressure is on to see savings starting in this same April; clearly this approach leaves contributions by stakeholders too late. To quote a recent answer to a public question submitted to council by the campaign, too late actually, for library users, staff and unions to feasibly have any impact on the formative ‘high level’ stages of the plan.That applies especially to potentially outright rejecting the plan, as it would mean renegotiating the budget in other areas and there would not be adequate time. It will only remain for us to have a say that might tweak the ‘detail’.

As a result the campaign has concerns that this feasibility study will have no effect on the plans for implementing the proposed cuts. Will it be a convenient example they can point to and claim they have done due diligence on this front as they put through cuts? In reality, if the council begin implementing the cuts and redundancies this year before consultation has been done, they could face a judicial review. Consultation becomes unreal if the result is actually foregone conclusion. We remain worried they could try to make redundancies in September. We hope staff are treated with respect and kept fully informed, not kept in the dark about their future.

It has recently broken news in the Newshopper. Read their report here https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/17553370.lewisham-library-redevelopment-study-due-next-month/

What's the History?

Lewisham Libraries Service has been cut drastically over the last decade, and the promised improvement to the service of the community library scheme that puts volunteers in place of staff managed by various unaccountable organisations has been a predictable disaster: Recently a new IT system was put in place and several community libraries couldn’t lend, return or renew books. While some services in the UK thrive, with increased borrowing and use, Lewisham languishes with a huge fall in borrowing, due to reduced opening hours, poor stock, privatisation by the back door and de-skilling as so many librarians and assistants were made redundant including union activists.

Demands - What is it our campaign must win?

To Save Lewisham Libraries we’ll use every avenue we can, from public appeals, protests and press releases to private correspondence lobbying. More suggested actions and plans you can get involved with to follow.

TRANSPARENCY – Expose the decision-making for services reliant on public funds.

    We demand the public release of the brief given to internal consultants of the feasibility study, and for consultation with the public to be launched immediately. What goals must the plan meet to be defined feasible?

    Additionally we demand immediate public scrutiny of the  plans for how to cut the service beside the feasibility study.

    We demand regular meetings with the councillors responsible for the service.

    We demand an audit of the community libraries, which aren't being held accountable on the standard service delivery the scheme guaranteed, council pledged meant to take back in house services that fail in the hands of community organisation, and has been turning a blind eye, particularly at Crofton Park.  We shouldn't have to make these demands, we should be able to expect this diligence.

ACCOUNTABILITY - Hold to account all the authorities over Lewisham irresponsibly de-skilling, casualising and degrading the Library service.

    We shall expose how not just Tory cuts to local authorities but the council's decisions on how to deploy that shrinking budget have been made on poor values and not the values of solidarity and socialism they were elected on.

    This is in order to make the case for a more realistic approach: Resistance has always been and is increasingly the only responsible direction. We can see where acquiescence gets us. We’ll analyse what’s been done and look at councils that prove bolder approaches pay dividends, and raise awareness of what can technically and politically be done now.

ANTI-AUSTERITY AGENDA - Stop further damage and raise awareness of the need for the service to return to form. Right now we are at breaking point, and council is still pursuing David Cameron's Localism and Big Society idea, which was always an excuse for making crucial services precarious. Council must start enacting alternative strategies like the Preston Model for fair local procurement and municipal socialism.

    We must raise the public consciousness of how vital a professional statutory library service is, how we can’t afford to see it run down, remembering what is being lost, what qualities a good service delivers and what underpins that.

    National government, needless to say, needs to bring local authority funding back to normal, back to the levels pre 2008 crash, with immediate effect, and thereupon all libraries should be taken back in house and a mobile library services set up again, along with serious investment in the collection online and off, suspension of fines, and ensuring all libraries have a quiet reading area.

How to take action for this

Join our next stall flyering to raise awareness midday Saturday the 18th May 2019 outside the Deptford Lounge Library, Deptford High Street.

 https://www.facebook.com/events/1235790189908838/

Join our next meeting  

Monday, 15 April 2019 from 19:15-21:00 and the venue is still to be announced:

https://www.facebook.com/events/2792041134171741/

Use our template of suggested points collected by one of our activists as inspiration to put in your own words your concern in emails to your representatives. You could start with your few local ward councillors and MP easily using Writetothem.com.

Then use your own email application to contact: Councillor responsible for Lewisham libraries, the Lewisham Mayor and the Chair of Safer Stronger Communities Select Committee, and UK Government minister with responsibilities for Libraries:

cllr_jonathan.slater@lewisham.gov.uk, damien.egan@lewisham.gov.uk, cllr_Juliet.Campbell@lewisham.gov.uk, michael.ellis.mp@parliament.uk

Raise it at your next local assembly, of local public engagement with representatives!

Move our motion [https://savelewishamlibraries.blogspot.com/p/save-libraries-motion-8th-april-2019.html] 

in your trade union and local branch of your political party, if you're in one.

In your own time distribute copies of our latest flyer: (which we'll link here when its ready)

Get in the know the better to argue, by checking out the links on our resources page

Can we (please!) be more ambitious for our libraries?

“We do mind-building, soul-affirming, life-saving work”. - Khalil Gibran Muhammad, former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Imagine if the British Library was open to everyone, and was also responsible for running all the local libraries in London. The funding, I suppose, would come partly from the Mayor’s office, with the rest coming from private donations. That’s the closest I can get to describing the New York Public Library system as depicted in Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Ex Libris, shown at Deptford Cinema last weekend.

The film is 3hrs 17 minutes long, which I appreciate sounds like a big commitment if you’re not a library nerd. But it doesn’t have a narrative, so you could watch it in chunks, or watch just half an hour of it to get the idea. I would urge anyone with responsibility for libraries to do so. The film moves from librarians and other staff on the front line, to glimpses of public events, footage of the many different services that take place across the library network – lectures, reading groups, baby sessions, kids’ programming classes -  and a number of administrative meetings. While watching it felt like there were perhaps too many of these, but in fact they are the scenes that have really stayed with me. In every scene the leadership demonstrate passion, strong values, and most strikingly ambition.

This is what comes through most in the film, and has nothing to do with available funds or staffing structures. The management team are clearly aiming to meet not only their statutory requirements, but asking how they can go further. All their plans are underpinned by their mission, as they ask themselves not just what they need to do but what could they possibly do? How are they serving the communities they are working in? We see how they are constantly monitoring how their needs change and looking at how they can continue to meet them; planning alongside educators to make sure their collections meet the needs of students and teachers; considering their duty to homeless New Yorkers who use the library; providing local people with internet access at home, to help them develop their digital skills and access the library’s online services. There is such a strong sense of a mission, a passionate belief in who and what libraries are for.

Rather than exporting a model that treats libraries as a problem, rather than the solution to many problems, we should be learning from the places that have got it right – Chester West & Chester were the winners of last year’s Guardian’s Public Service awards for their ambitious Storyhouse project. Funded partly by the local authority and partly by the Arts Council and other trusts (see the Guardian article here), Storyhouse combines a new library, cinema and theatre and is run by the council’s library services team. The result?

“Today, visitor numbers have rocketed by more than half a million, library membership has increased by 6% – up 11% among teenagers – and book borrowing is on the rise.”

The size and scope of the two are very different, but what Chester and New York have in common is ambition. Someone, somewhere in Chester thought big and then tried to make it happen. We may not be able to spend that much, or raise that much in additional funding, and we might not have a spare art deco building lying about, but surely we can do better than the minimum? Rather than asking how little can we get away with spending on our library service, why not ask how much we could get away with spending? What’s the best we could do with what we have, and what could we do if we had a bit more?

But with the best will in the world, such a service cannot be run on a shoestring. A service that goes above and beyond for its residents cannot rely mostly on volunteers, however passionate they may be. We need trained staff who can help the public with the wide variety of issues they have, and staffed opening hours that can meet the community’s needs.

I’m not suggesting that we move to a public-private partnership like New York, or that we could replicate their budget, but imagine if we could replicate the kind of ambition that both New York and Chester have for their libraries. I appreciate that these are hard times, and I’m aware of the huge cuts local authorities have suffered under austerity, but an ambitious library strategy would connect the service to other council goals – (as such they could be said to be part of social care strategies rather than leisure). As described in previous blogs, libraries are pivotal in reducing loneliness in older people, and supporting people living in poverty. The council aims to be a sanctuary borough, and admirably plans to welcome 100 refugee families in the next year, aims to improve our secondary schools, reduce knife crime and make Lewisham safer. Libraries can support all these ambitions, and should be seen as an intrinsic part of all those strategies, rather than a hindrance to them, just another rival for funding.

We await the results of the council’s feasibility study into the possibility of rebuilding Lewisham Library. I hope the council will take this opportunity to ‘think big’ for libraries, and will see the true value of a professionally staffed, well-funded and ambitious service.

Ex Libris film review by a Save Lewisham Libraries campaigner