October 25, 2024
Dear Libraries Consultation Team, Birmingham City Councillors and Commissioners,
As a coalition of library users, Friends of Library groups, and library campaigns across the city, we are writing as the latest consultation on the future of the library services has launched. We are told 'your views really matter.' However, we are only being given a week and a half to give our views, with no prior notice, and next week is half term when many will be away and schools cannot engage. Yet again, it feels like our views do not matter, that the Council does not treat the requirement for democratic participation in local government with any seriousness.
The ‘revised option 4’ proposal presented by the consultation team represents a 40% cut to library hours across the city. This proposed reduction comes on top of the most recent round of cuts in 2017 that cut library services to the bone, despite public opposition. Just seven years later, when need is greater on just about every possible measure (poverty, child poverty, the literacy gap, social isolation, Covid legacy issues, cost of living, digital exclusion), why is a service that both addresses and ameliorates these issues on a daily basis targeted for a 40% cut? How can our library service withstand another deep cut and still be 'comprehensive and efficient', as required by law?
This is not a rhetorical question: we would like an answer. Answers have been in short supply in this consultation. We were promised an answer in writing to a question asked in September’s full Council meeting. We are still waiting.
We believe the proposed cuts would breach the council’s duty to deliver best value. Libraries are preventative of more expensive problems, and we ask you to reflect upon the fact that previous cuts to libraries and other vital services have resulted in increased costs.
More cuts to services and a further turn to the voluntary sector cannot be the solution; they will not produce a more resilient city. Our city already relies on the helping hands of so many volunteers and community organisations.
For communities to thrive, they need an infrastructure of public services. Libraries are part of that public infrastructure, safe spaces that support lifelong learning. The savings to be made by this cut to our library services will harm our communities and restrict life chances.
More broadly, we are profoundly concerned about the programme of sweeping cuts planned for our city. We know that our city has lost over a billion pounds of funding since 2010: over 36% of its funding between 2010/2011 and 2020/2021. We also know that there was sleight of hand involved in the issuance of the section 114 notice. We know that reasons given were not the whole truth, providing cover for the Oracle debacle. The fact that the mismanagement of Oracle has not become a scandal at the national level is perplexing. The cuts budget should never have been passed, and knowing what we now know, should be paused for an investigation to take place.
We do not have to keep repeating the mistakes of the past. There are alternative ways forward, including those presented in the recent report ‘Value for Money and Accountability’ by the Audit Reform Lab at the University of Sheffield. Why has there not been a pause in the cuts for alternatives to be considered? Why are our local leaders not standing up for the people of Birmingham? Over a million people and generations to come stand to suffer in myriad ways from these cuts that will be difficult or impossible to ever reverse.
It is time for an alternative solution. We await your response and the answers to our questions.
Yours sincerely,
Birmingham Loves Libraries
Birmingham Loves Libraries is an umbrella campaign uniting Birmingham Friends of Library groups, Save our Libraries campaigns, and library users and city residents campaigning to protect and champion our libraries and library services. A list of member campaigns can be found here. Contact us here.
Comments