Alan Gibbons’ Blog

chris.elliott@cambridge-news.co.uk

The library service in Cambridgeshire is facing another stormy chapter as council bosses try to save money. Chris Elliott reports.

THE grim news that Cambridgeshire County Council is facing its biggest cash crisis for decades is still sinking in - but behind the headlines about hundreds of job losses and cuts in services, the county’s libraries are set for a major shake-up too.

The council says it is considering options “for transforming the way library services are delivered” - code for finding ways to save money.

Documents focusing on Shire Hall’s spending plans for the next five years pinpoint the need for “a strategic review” of the library service, including examining whether some so-called back office services, such as IT and book-buying, could be pooled with other neighbouring councils to keep costs down.

The council’s finance experts will run the rule over library buildings, to see if they can be run more cheaply. They also plan to review the Library Access Points, a network of community based library services, run by volunteers, in locations like community centres.

Likely to be the most controversial of all, however, is the idea of the council handing over the running of the library service to an outside body, such as a trust.

Rod Craig, director of community and adult services for the council, said this was one option the council would be considering.

“We have been looking at the library service over the past three or four months, in preparation for what we knew was coming - the financial difficulties the council is now facing - so that we could put some options on the table,” he said.

“The situation is that we need to save about £2 million from the library service over the next three years, and we want to avoid library closures. One way of saving money is to make things more efficient, and we are working with other local authorities in the region, with funding provided by the Government Office, to see if we can pool things like book buying and IT.

“But another option is to look at whether the services could be delivered by a trust. This would involve setting up a separate organisation, with a board of trustees, to take responsibility for running the libraries.

“The advantage of doing this is that a trust has a different status to a council and would have access to better sources of funding. It might even be possible to put our adult learning services under the auspices of the trust too - and a trust could perhaps run not only services in Cambridgeshire, but also in neighbouring areas.

“The thing to understand is that although a separate trust would be running things, the buck would still stop with us. We would set out what services the trust would be expected to provide, and we would consult the public.

“Our concern, of course, is to ensure people have the best library service possible.”

The trust model, which has already surfaced in other parts of the UK, including Wigan and Glasgow, can include actually switching ownership of library buildings, and their contents, to a trust, but Mr Craig said councils could retain ownership if they wished.

“There are several options and we have to look at them all in the coming months to see what might work,” he said.

The library service last suffered a major financial pogrom in 2003, when 10 libraries were closed.

Since then, a review of the mobile library service has also been carried out, and this will be looked at again now to see if cuts need to be made.

It also had a cloud hanging over it during the lengthy closure of the Central Library in Cambridge, which had to be rebuilt as part of the Grand Arcade shops complex.

Mr Craig said: “The Central Library, and other new facilities at places like Great Shelford, have been phenomenally successful.

People have been wowed by them. We still have 32 libraries in the county, and our objective is to make sure people still have an excellent service.”

Cllr Michael Williamson, the Lib Dem spokesman on the county council for community services, said: “We had a round of cuts in the library service a few years ago, and I think the current provision would be deemed by the Government only as adequate.

“Outsourcing the service to a trust might bring in more money, but it’s crucially important that the same level of service is maintained. If it wasn’t, that wouldn’t be acceptable.”

A B C of city’s library services

Cambridgeshire has 32 libraries and eight mobile library vehicles.

The county has 10 Library Access Points, run by volunteers. The centres were praised by a Government minister three years ago as a great example of community involvement.

The new Central Library in Cambridge opened last September - and got 17,000 visitors in its first week of operation.

It is the first public library in the country to include a British Film Institute Mediatheque, a special collection of historic films.

Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust was established six years ago to run libraries there - and has achieved “considerable improvements and major investment”, according to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

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