Cabinet member says Brick by Brick could build on libraries

GENE BRODIE, our bookish gyms correspondent, on the latest inadvertent slip by a council cabinet member which betrays the next possible target for the council’s ‘award-winning’ house-builders

Brick by Brick’s insatiable appetite for turning public property into mainly private flats could see the council’s “award-winning” house-builder (Total number of homes completed since 2015: ZERO) next turn its attention to the borough’s libraries.

That’s the conclusion from comments made by a council cabinet member during a scrutiny committee in the Town Hall chamber, after some astute probing on behalf of the people of Croydon by one sharp-witted councillor.

Brick by Brick has already muscled in on one of the borough’s 13 libraries, in South Norwood.

Brick by Brick built a £500,000 block of flats next to the Aldi near Norwood Junction Station, with a small library space squeezed in on the ground floor, while getting the site of the existing library on the junction of Selhurst Road and Lawrence Road on which they will build even more flats. Thus, the current five-floor library building is being replaced by a single floor of library space in the new build which will have flats on four floors above, too.

The rationale offered when this scheme was proposed – to barely a murmur of public opposition – was that the cost of the new building is little more than the repair bills for the crumbling concrete 1970s-built South Norwood Library. In fact, when the land values of the flats above the new building and those likely to be built on the former site are factored in, there’s potential for significant profits for Brick by Brick out of the scheme.

How the library space was being reduced in the new library was never raised as an issue, the council claiming “the proposed new building would be purpose-built and provide a flexible space that would have the same number of books as now. However, it would also offer more computers, more work spaces, and also allow for out-of-hours use for additional community activities, including adult learning classes”.

The borough’s library service is reassuringly back in-house, after the disastrous outsourcing efforts by the previous Tory administration, which had handed over the running of our libraries to Carillion, which collapsed in a heap of debt and bad-faith earlier this year.

Yet the prospect of the current Blairite-dominated Labour council “sweating its assets” through the bungling Brick by Brick builders has the potential to do far greater damage to the borough’s libraries than even Croydon’s hapless Tories ever managed.

Last week’s scrutiny committee was supposedly considering the “strategy” for the borough’s library service, with a report by the council’s officials set to be duly rubber-stamped by the cabinet in the new year.

Thankfully, one of the committee members, Labour councillor Joy Prince, had read the report, and found the latest barely hidden agenda.

“The paper mentions library buildings,” said the councillor for Waddon ward.

“I’m wondering to what extent you’re working with asset colleagues on how we can maximise the value or the income from the assets which are library buildings.

“Is there scope for, I don’t know, building flats on top of them, while obviously getting money from that to buy books or whatever?”

The ever-eager-to-please Oliver “Caddy” Lewis, the cabinet member for butt plugs, libraries and stuff, took the bait and embarked on a spiel about the council-owned properties with an answer full of business-friendly, Blairite soundbytes.

“We are absolutely looking at how we can get the best value from our libraries portfolio,” Lewis said.

The phrase “best value from our libraries portfolio” is the sort of thing you’d expect from a tawdry suburban estate agent, not the person supposed to be the champion of the borough’s libraries. The attitude should trouble the borough’s Council Tax-payers.

Lewis is also pursuing a trial scheme at Selsdon Library where it would be “open longer but staffed for the same amount of time”.

Lewis thinks that using CCTV and technology could allow library users access to the building, and its much-depleted stock of books, in the evenings, when the council’s librarian staff have left work for the day.

Selsdon Library was built next to Sainsbury’s, and Lewis reckons that the supermarket will help to “police” the out-of-hours library access.

“I think what that will do is deliver a more flexible services so people can go before work or after work and they can use the library more on their terms, which I think is where we want to get to with a modern library service.”

As we’ve all come to expect, Lewis didn’t mention what the borough’s librarians think is “where they want to get to with the service”.

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