General Chat

Just heard that my local council, in order to make £30 million of savings in the next 2 years is slashing services, quote from the local paper today

"the authority had no choice but to slash front-line services after already making £80 million worth of cuts and axing more than 1,000 jobs since 2010." with another 20% cut this year on government funds.

6 libraries will close :-( 6 council run markets, the mobile library service, 5 community centres, 14 play areas, youth clubs etc. Funding for travel to school will be "revised" and will have "significant impact".

and it's likely that council tax will go up 4% in April.

The market here and the library will both go, the library was moved last year into the new school building, which in itself was a blow because it is really too far to walk, especially carrying books particularly for the elderly or disabled.

It's just my personal opinion, but I don't see how a country can be said to be recovered from the recession when the libraries are being closed....to me public libraries, free to all, are part of what makes this country 'civilised'.

:-( :-|

As an aside I also wonder how the jobless without computers are supposed to search daily for jobs at their local library if their local library no longer exists? ( I saw lots of people doing this at the local one).

Rose, you'll be telling us next that the Chief Exec and directors of departments (if it's corporate-organised) are all taking massive pay cuts and the councillors are happy to have their expenses budget cut. ;-)

To be fair to the council JoyLouise, they have managed to make most of their staff cuts voluntary redundancies rather than compulsory, they cut costs by putting the council offices in part in the town library and other buildings, and I can't fault the general services here, they do everything they can to keep the area 'up to scratch'...eg I reported a fly tipped mattress behind the play park yesterday and it was removed this morning. I 'know of' a few councillors, and they are not fat cats and do seem to be making their best efforts to keep essential services going. :-)

They've probably undertaken a survey to work out how many people actually borrow books. Despite many people choosing to download them to read, closures tend to effect the more older person.

I never used our village library mainly as it was so small with little choice or rotation of reading matter. There is a move in our county to have volunteers staff the outlying ones to make them more cost effective. If it should ever close, users would have a 20 min car or 40 min bus journey to the nearest alternative.

Our village library is staffed by volunteers.

The library here was very good till it was moved, it was only a small building but was reasonably busy and had a very good range of books, after it moved it seemed to be mainly romances or crime and the non fiction section was very poor, so not surprised that numbers went down.

Our village library is located in a resource centre.

This houses not only the library but also:

Childrens study area
Computers with internet access
Rooms which are used for community activities
Restaurant/cafe
Art exhibitions
Craft groups
The knitting group who natter...a lot
Presentations on countless topics

Although the number of books are somewhat limited (they change popular genres every few weeks) you can reserve a book from the main libraries in the County and they are delivered and you are telephoned when they have arrived.

This has to be the ideal solution to struggling libraries.

Our village library is also run by volunteers, and housed in the local Burgh Hall, which also has all the amenities listed by supercrutch, apart from the cafe.

It is open several days a week, including Saturday, has a bus stop right outside, and is popular with all ages.

Don't think that would work for our village library. Our bedroom is probably bigger than that is !

It's all because the Government has cut funding to Councils, without realising each area is different - with different numbers of elderly, young children, and teenagers!!!
(It also means people tend to blame the local Council rather than the Government)

Hampshire County Council is cutting admin and front-line staff, (those on p poor pay), but amazingly has employed more people on 50K a year - that'll be those who 'work' from home :-|

A couple of years ago the council tried to close our library, telling us we could use any of the others, unfortunately a number of villagers couldn't as there was no public transport to anywhere with one. We are the larger village amongst a lot of smaller ones - so we have the shops, doctors, library etc.
At the same time they were said to be employing an extra person at the main library to help the unemployed use the computers to job search. Great news for the unemployed in our village - not!

I think it was 2/3 years ago when cuts made our council close (or try to close) quite a few libraries. Now, as usual I can't remember the details, but someone found that it was illegal to close them, so they got round that by reducing the number and getting volunteers to run them. I don't go to ours any more (since I got the kindle) but I think it is well used and seems to have everything it had before. I think it might get some sort of reduced support financially from the council for resources, biiks etc.

Looking at out local councils budget for the last year, 70% of expenditure was on Education and Adult Social Care - the latter rising faster than all other sectors. This is followed by Highways, Environment with Cultural services, Libraries etc, are way behind at less than 6%.

The unfortunate thing is that whilst the library service will be expected to make cuts like everyone else, even if it were to close altogether, the impact on the total budget would still be relatively insignificant.

The same thing happened here in Somerset Ann. I think some of the libraries have had their opening hours reduced.

Dear Rambling Rose and All

Hello

I feel an urge to be a suffragette coming on me!

I would chain myself to my local library if the local council tried to close it down.

It is much more than a place to borrow books.

The youngsters come to do their homework, different groups hire the rooms for meetings, the computers are always occupied.

A vibrant place where people from all walks of life can go.


Take gentle care
With best wishes
Elizabeth, EOS
xx