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Consultants’ year-long study looks to close four public libraries

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EXCLUSIVE By STEVEN DOWNES

Under threat: might Sanderstead Library be among those public buildings the council wants to flog off

Croydon’s Conservative-run council has a secret plan to close at least four of the borough’s public libraries, Inside Croydon has discovered.

The Tories have had a firm of consultants working on a libraries report for most of the past year. During Croydon’s year as London’s Borough of Culture.

Croydon’s libraries have been underfunded and undermined by successive administrations, as the cash-strapped council has sought ways to cut costs and increase income. The latest plan is understood to be part of the crisis-hit council’s “asset disposal strategy”, which would seek to sell the public buildings to pay down some of Croydon’s £1.6billion debt.

Library provision is a statutory duty for local authorities in England, meaning that every council must provide public libraries. What is less clear is how many libraries any local authority area might need. Croydon Council currently has 13 libraries in a borough of more than 390,000 people.

But since the first covid lockdown in 2020, only one of Croydon’s libraries has been operating anything like “normal” opening hours. Central Library, next to the Town Hall, is open five days a week.

Of the others, six libraries are open just three days each week, while five are only open for two days a week. The reduced opening hours are a cost-cutting measure that is a direct result of the council going bankrupt three years ago.

Under-funded and undermined: Croydon’s libraries have been ill-served by the council over the past 15 years

Some additional opening times have been provided recently through an automated library pass system, when two libraries have been opened “out of hours” but without any trained library staff. The council has instead spent money hiring a security guard to staff the library.

Inevitably, with two-day and three-day openings, library usage is much reduced and many of the Croydon public have also lost the habit of going to their libraries.

It seems highly likely that “reduced usage” of the libraries will be used by Tory Mayor Jason Perry as one of the major excuses for closing a quarter of the borough’s libraries.

Professional council officials, the people who actually run the borough, regardless of who gets elected, have viewed libraries both as an expensive drain on finances but also as a potential source of cash. There has been little thought given to reframing the role of our public library in the digital age as an important community hub, providing a range of services that go far beyond simply lending books.

The previous plan to close any of Croydon’s libraries was in early 2021 and was badly bungled, which ought to not come as a surprise since in charge was Labour cabinet member Ollie “Shit Show” Lewis, the councillor who had presided over the Fairfield Halls fiasco.

Croydon’s 2021 library consultation was damned by none other than The Library Campaign for being unlawful. The Campaign’s submission cited Supreme Court precedents and said that the Croydon consultation “shows no almost no understanding of libraries or even of the law… the projected savings are very small within the council’s overall budget – and are in any case most unlikely to be achieved”.

And they added that, “The social and educational damage from the current plan would be far more expensive than any savings made.”

Brutalist: there have been plans to vacate South Norwood’s library building since 2017

In 2019, when the council commissioned (yet another) consultants’ report, the proposed operational savings – the running costs of four closed libraries – was put at £350,000 per year. Which is less than two years’ salary for council chief executive Katherine Kerswell.

Any new proposals for closures and asset disposals would require another public consultation (which could be at least the fourth in Croydon since 2012), and is likely to be drawn up by many of the same council officials who were responsible for the previous load of old cobblers.

The five libraries earmarked for closure in 2021 were Bradmore Green, Shirley, Sanderstead, Broad Green and South Norwood.

It seems very possible that any revised closure plan will include those libraries which were on the previous hit list: of those, four are currently open just two days a week, with only Sanderstead being open for three days.

The potential property values of Sanderstead and Shirley would make those library sites attractive as part of any asset disposals, while there have been plans to close South Norwood Library since 2017, the council wanting to sell the Brutalist 1960s building and decant the library functions into a Brick by Brick build opposite Norwood Junction Station.

Brick by Brick never completed its “architect-designed” library in their Pimp House building, and the ground floor area intended has remained empty and unused for almost four years, a kind of ironic monument to the council house-building firm that bankrupted the borough.

It is not known which libraries might be on any new “hit list” under Perry and his lackeys, but sources inside Fisher’s Folly have confirmed that the council with no money to spend has been spending money on a consultants report (another one).

This work has been conducted over the past year by Reading-based firm Activist Group, who have been in Croydon’s library service to conduct a review and what one council official described as “recommendations for change”.

Inevitably, phrases such as “making better use of resources” have also been bandied about.

Library demand and usage, local demographics and the condition of buildings (maintenance costs of some old building stock are a constant issue for the council) have all been considered.

This is being dressed up as an exercise not in reducing the library budget, but in reallocating it. In other words, sacrificing three or four libraries, shift their staff and the spending on them to other branches, while cashing in on a handful of property sales.

What has raised suspicions is that there was supposed to be a report including the findings from Activist Group on the agenda for next week’s council cabinet meeting, all part of the “Council’s Transformation Programme”. But that item has not appeared.

Town Hall sources suggest that there may be a simmering political row over the choice of which libraries to close, given that if this plan goes ahead, it will be taking place in the run-up to the London elections in May and a General Election.

Councillor Jason Cummings, Perry’s finance cabinet member, is the Tories’ parliamentary election candidate for Croydon East and on the council represents a ward in Shirley.

“Imagine that for an election slogan,” a Katharine Street source said today. “‘Jason Cummings: I shafted everyone with a 15% Council Tax rise, and I still closed my local library’.

“Hardly a vote winner, is it?”

Read more: Lip-service webinars fail to consider libraries’ community future
Read more: Libraries are our long-term investment. Don’t squander it
Read more: Mayor Perry confesses: it could take 10 years to fix this mess
Read more: Tory Mayor Perry admits: ‘Essentially, we’re insolvent’. Again
Read more: Town Hall staff braced for £31m more cuts and job losses


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