Open letter by Library campaigner Shirley Burnham
Posted by: Alan Gibbons in UncategorizedI am so vexed. In the making of a film for BBC One which was broadcast on 1st March, I travelled to Hillingdon and saw their beautiful, refurbished libraries in operation. I also spoke to the Lead Member there and am convinced that there is absolutely no reason why Swindon could not have the same. When Roy Clare visited Old Town Library on 24th February 2009, the first two libraries in Hillingdon were already a success and all the financial arrangements to save front line services there were working.
The facts on Hillingdon were made public and were available for all to see, so it is my understanding that Swindon Council could have seen them and discussed them. However, the Council ignored friendly approaches from Hillingdon and may have been discouraged by the MLA from researching the Hillingdon success.
An independent consultant’s report was produced in February 2009, at the request of the Deputy Leader of Swindon Council, to a Brief approved by the Cabinet Member with responsibility for the library portfolio. That report suggested alternative ways for the Council to achieve the required savings to keep open the four community libraries scheduled for closure or the replacement of paid library staff by volunteers.
The MLA decided at some point to submit a confidential and anonymous critique of the consultancy report to Swindon’s Chief Librarian without advising its author, representatives of the residents, our MP and our elected councillors. Later, the MLA acknowledged that it had produced the document.
Due to the MLA’s critique, the reasons for which have never been explained, all discussion of Library budgetary issues in Swindon were effectively stifled. A formal complaint about the MLA’s actions was made by the consultant to DCMS in April 2009, which was subsequently upheld. However, no steps were taken to protect the people of Swindon from the consequences of the MLA’s intervention.
Residents of Old Town held a public meeting on 27th April at which the consultant’s report was shown to them for the first time. They then voted unanimously to encourage a meeting between the consultant and Cabinet Members, to discuss possible solutions to Swindon’s Library Budget issues. A representative of the MLA was present at that vote. But since April 2009 the Council has failed to explore the question.
On 20th July 2009 I wrote to the MLA Board on behalf of supporters of Swindon’s Old Town Library who wanted me to express their concerns to Members of the Board with regard to these actions by the MLA in its dealings with Swindon. To date the MLA’s Chair, Sir Andrew Motion, has refused to circulate the letter to his Board Members.
My July letter requested an apology to the people of Swindon and to our MP for some of the MLA’s actions and for efforts to be made to support constructive dialogue and understanding between those directly involved. Although Old Town Library is still open, the quality of service it will provide in future is not at all clear, nor is there certainty about the future for other branch libraries in Swindon. On my very recent visit to Hillingdon, when I saw their refurbished libraries and understood the means by which that success had been achieved, I realized exactly what we might have enjoyed in Swindon and what we have been denied.
Yours faithfully,
Shirley Burnham
Entries (RSS)
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:39 pm
In April 2009 I and many other residents of Old Town attended a public meeting here at which Mr Tim Coates explained his Swindon Report. Now we have watched the Inside Out programme on television, showing the excellent libraries in the Borough of Hillingdon where, I understand, he was the consultant who advised them initially. I am very sorry that Swindon has not followed the matter up with Mr Coates, because evidently we could by now have what Hillingdon has.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 pm
The short answer to the above is, I think, that the MLA has no accountability or responsibilities to you, to residents.. or to anyone other than goverment ministers in one direction, and councils in the other. And there’s no particularly good reason for them to do anything at all that you want them to do.
As for the MLA report vs the independent consultant’s , Tim Coates, report. I think that what Tim Coates actually did was what a little consultant’s number. Management consutants virtually never go into a organisation with a clean, open mind. They go in with an agenda , and usually a template of actions, that they will try to put across as the right way forward. And because there is a major cultural difference between civil servants and someone who once ran a chain of bookshop, that’s why everyone clammed up.
Just as a matter of interest, when I googled the Cabinet Member , Councillor Gibbons, at Hillingdon.., I almost instantly found that his cabinet had just decided to get rid of its own scrutiny committee. In the words of the Head of Cabinet… “If anyone argues, we’ll just railroad it all through” . Yippee for democracy, accountability, and clean councils.
March 7th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Andrew
Forget about culture, your views about templates or what I used to do 20 years ago, and about what the MLA might think their responsibilities are. The plain truth is that what Swindon council should have done was a matter of utter common sense. No amount of evasion by them or piffle from the MLA will change that. The people of Swindon understand it perfectly well. No more excuses.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
You sound a bit ignorant, my friend, or more likely someone unused to having your opinions challenged.
I’ve spent a huge chunk of my working life as various permutations of contract programmer/computer consultant/systems designer. Not a manager, but I’ve worked in umpteen business sectors, and been around when the management consultants have arrived on the scene. Unless it’s just some local lad doing a bit of closely defined work…, how consultants work is pretty much exactly as I described above.
Over the aggregate of your postings here….
1. Your approach is direct, and very corporate-like… beat a path directly to where you consider the power and money is. Councillors, headmasters.
2. Anyone else, be they librarians, members, users, readers are essentially cyphers, but whose supposed views get referred to through surveys.
3. Much of what you propose is desiigned to create a broad avenue down which publishers can shovel their stuff, whilst you complain about the lack of competition amongst wholesalers..
4. The last time I looked at your Good Library Blog, it had a very large advertising banner, an American publisher, I recall.
5. Publishers are not saviours, as you described them in another post. They’re just outfits who have interests.
Why make an issue of this right now.? Conservatives reference points for good management are large corporations. I don’t particularly agree. No matter that Conservatives, as the architects of the unregullated, grossly unbalanced failed economy, areproven macro-economic incompetents on the grandest scale…. what they are very, very good at is creating a chaos into which they can inject their policies.. You are part of that , and for me it is vitally important that publishers not be allowed to get a grip on library services.