Permanent closures of some of Bristol’s 27 libraries seem inevitable, despite the fact that savage proposed cuts could be less severe than feared, a city council meeting heard. Plans unveiled last week to halve the service’s current £4.7million budget would have left just seven to ten branches, plus the Central one, the council’s finance sub-committee was told.
Options from doing nothing and keeping all libraries open to slashing £2.4million from the existing funding were debated at the meeting on Wednesday, January 15. Public health and communities committee chairman Cllr Stephen Williams (Lib Dem, Westbury-on-Trym & Henleaze) said he opposed the biggest amount of cuts.
He said: “It was too big and therefore it hasn’t been supported. What I do recognise is that we can’t make over £40million of savings [across the council] without the library service making some contribution.
“My strong steer to you is to go for one of the lower budgetary savings which would give us a nudge to reform the service. While we have 26 [branch] buildings across the city that have the word ‘library’ across their door, we do not have a comprehensive service.
“Across a given day, quite a lot of those libraries are closed. Today is Wednesday, five are closed. Tomorrow, nine will be closed all day long.
“Even the ones that are open are only open for three or four hours a day. While in theory we’ve got a good network, the service offer is actually poor, if we’re honest, so I want a budgetary nudge to reform that service and make it fit for purpose.”
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Cllr Patrick McAllister (Green, Hotwells & Harbourside) said libraries were a “zombie service” in some areas of Bristol. Cllr Williams replied: “It’s certainly a shadowy service.
“Usage of our libraries has enormous variations across the city. Avonmouth library has about 3,000 visitors a year.
“Henleaze library and Bishopston on the Gloucester Road have about 70,000 visitors a year – an absolute massive difference. We need to think about what sort of library service we want.
“I would like, whatever the network is, for it to be open for when people find it convenient to go to the library, so that will require some evening openings, and can we deliver other council services from this network of buildings as well? We have a huge physical asset that is in the dark for a huge amount of the week, so we are very wastefully using a big resource at the moment.”
Cllr Andrew Brown (Lib Dem, Hengrove & Whitchurch Park) said: “I want to add my voice to those pushing back against the top-line options that were presented to us because they will not fly with me.” Cllr Williams said libraries had been cut severely in the past and that reducing opening times further while keeping the buildings was “political trickery, which I don’t want to do moving forward”.
He said Bristol had more libraries than any other core city, such as Liverpool which has 16. Cllr Williams said: “We could get to a point where the service offer in terms of hours open is not that different to what we have at the moment, but could well be delivered from fewer buildings.
“The point is it will be a better service for the public.” He said a task force would be set up to establish the criteria for closing individual branches.
Cllr Williams said a scheme where residents accessed some libraries after hours when they were not staffed could be extended. Cllr Kelvin Blake (Labour, Hillfields) said: “I get where you’re coming from but I really worry about the outcome.
“Once bricks and mortar has gone, it’s gone, and you won’t be bringing it back in the future in communities. If we’re in a better position in the future then we can then extend hours and improve services.
“Libraries are not used for traditional library services. The one in Hillfields, which is one of the ones at risk because of the numbers, is a massive community asset, it provides a lot of services.”
Cllr Williams said he agreed but that Hillfields library was closed on Monday, Thursday and Friday so offered a poor service. He said: “Those are the issues we need to look at.
“Are we wedded to the theoretical physical network or are we committed to delivering a quality service? There is no good time to do it, which is undoubtedly why the previous [Labour] administration knew the heat was incoming.”
He said previous budget cuts and reduction in opening hours amounted to “closures by stealth”. Cllr Williams said: “There is an opportunity for us to reform the service, do it once and do it well.”
Cllr Rob Logan (Labour, Filwood) said £2million of cuts would be damaging. He said: “There is an appetite to come up with something better, so surely we can come up with a better timescale and a better plan.”
The sub-committee’s comments will go to the strategy and resources committee which meets to agree the annual draft budget on February 3 ahead of the final decision by full council.
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