Education correspondent GENE BRODIE on the ever-present threat to the borough’s public libraries, with a doom-laden, long-delayed council report expected next week
Under threat: Sanderstead is one of four libraries that Mayor Jason Perry wants to close – backed by Tory MP Chris Philp
At the council cabinet meeting to be held on September 25 (the first such meeting held by our hard-working councillors since July 15), our £82,000 per year powerless mayor, Jason Perry, is expected to decide the fate of the borough’s public libraries – downgrading half of them, including closing four of them.
The latest libraries consultation was conducted at the start of the year, but the reports arising from that public consultation were withheld by Tory Mayor Perry, in case it might damage the General Election prospects of Croydon South’s Conservative MP, Chris Philp. We are now told that the official papers from the consultation should be available on the council website next Monday, September 9.
No one is expecting “good news”.
Residents – especially those in Bradmore Green in Old Coulsdon, Broad Green, Sanderstead and Shirley, who all have their public libraries under threat of closure with the sites flogged off to pay down Perry’s council’s debts – have been, understandably, appalled that their libraries may be closed.
There are many good reasons why all the libraries should be saved.
Back in 2021, a prominent local figure, opposing very similar library closures that were being proposed then, wrote: “Cutting important services like the libraries… is not the answer to the council’s financial problems… The amount of money that would be saved by closing the libraries is a drop in the ocean of the council’s debt.”
Convenient Conservative: it was not so long ago that Tory MP Chris Philp was running petitions and campaigns to stop the closure of libraries in Old Coulsdon, Sanderstead and Shirley
Accompanied by a photograph of the under-threat library in Old Coulsdon, those were the words of Tory MP Philp.
Philp has been silent now that his Tory colleagues have dusted off those previous plans and presented them as some kind of panacea to the council’s financial problems.
Why is it that those libraries at Bradmore Green, Broad Green, Sanderstead and Shirley find themselves at such dire risk again?
It was in the Labour-commissioned report of consultants Red Quadrant in 2018 where these libraries were first described as “local” libraries, placed on the lowest tier of a hierarchy based then, it seems, solely on respective visitor numbers in 2016-2017, at a time when the council was looking for council-owned sites to hand over to its in-house house-builder, Brick by Brick.
A lot has happened since then…
By the time of the ”Options for cost savings in libraries provision in the borough” report to cabinet in May 2021, the reasons suggested for choosing these libraries for closure were:
- number of visits,
- maintenance costs, and
- “they all had another library with 1.5 miles”.
The reasoning keeps shifting, but the closure proposals remain remarkably similar.
In regard to those maintenance costs, the same report told us that Community Infrastructure Levy funding of £265,000 had been allocated for the repairs and maintenance at these four libraries.
CIL is money paid by developers who had been granted planning permission in the borough, to be used for a range of good, community purposes. Like libraries.
Yet according to a response from Croydon Council to a Freedom of Information request, three years later, there is nothing to show that this CIL funding has ever been used to maintain or repair the libraries, or indeed that had ever been requested.
Of that supposedly “committed” CIL funding, £127,000 was to be used for “urgent” or “essential… within two years” work at Sanderstead Library, as identified in a condition survey commissioned by the council.
Under threat: Shirley is one of the public libraries which consultants suggest could be axed
Three years on, and despite the decision in October 2021 to keep the library open, it appears that few, if any of those “urgent” or “essential” works have been carried out. Ask yourself why.
The condition of Sanderstead (and presumably the other libraries) has been allowed to deteriorate further. Perhaps part of the council’s evolving closure plan is to allow them to reach a “point of no return”.
A report to cabinet on November 30, 2022 (that is, with Perry installed as Mayor and well before the latest “consultation”), listed asset disposals that would raise an estimated £100million for the cash-strapped council. “Reduction in libraries” was top of the list, although there were no details of which library assets would be sold or what value had been estimated for each.
The November 2023 Library Service Review by the Activist Group includes the same hierarchy of Croydon public libraries as drawn up by their fellow consultants almost six years earlier. If the council had saved all the money it has squandered on successive consultants, who appear to cut and pasted each others’ work to pass it off as some kind of “fresh” insight, we might not be in such a deep hole as we are today.
The 2023 Activist Group report gives no consideration to any changes in the usage rankings, despite their work coming after covid, while Red Quadrant’s work had been done before the pandemic and resulting closures. Nor did the latest report provide any review of the hierarchy based on what’s happening in the individual libraries.
It’s been coming for a while: MP Philp’s official website from three years ago – the £500k savings on library running costs were a ‘drop in the ocean’ then
“It was clearly convenient for the council to have the same four libraries sitting at the bottom of the pile,” according to one campaigner hoping to salvage their library.
According to the report to cabinet in January 2024, the reasons now given for the same four libraries to take the drop are:
- usage rates (rather than just “visits”)
- the size and condition of the buildings
- the size and deprivation of the catchment areas and
- their capacity to provide a more comprehensive library offer through “partnerships with other services and events”.
Croydon is a large borough, geographically and in terms of population, and has 13 public libraries. The report acknowledges that in 2022-2023, Sanderstead Library had risen to sixth in the usage rankings, from 13/13 in that previous 2016-2017 report, and to 5/13 for book issues.
Obviously, the “size” of the library has not changed, but its condition has not improved, and probably got worse, due to council’s own negligence and neglect, despite having that CIL money available for the “essential” works.
The January 2024 cabinet report suggests that Sanderstead’s catchment area merges into that of Purley and Selsdon libraries.
“If it does, then it must also be true that Purley’s and Selsdon’s merge into Sanderstead’s catchment area,” the campaigner tells Inside Croydon. “So what?”
Under threat: schoolchildren, pensioners and other Old Coulsdon residents protesting against the closure threat to Bradmore Green Library. Their Tory councillors and MP were nowhere to be seen on this occasion
The report states that Sanderstead’s “local population is among the least deprived in the country”. The same could probably also be said for the great majority of the population local to those neighbouring libraries at Purley and Selsdon.
Sanderstead’s capacity to provide “more” is linked to the size of the building. Other members of the Sanderstead Library campaign have already outlined cost-effective ways of improving and enhancing the space available at Sanderstead.
According to the report’s authors, Sanderstead Library is not alone in having shortcomings around its building, its size and accessibility. “The library building at Purley is not well located for local communities to access” and also “requires significant investment and maintenance”.
The council admits that the location of Purley Library is “very poor, located on a corner site on a busy road that is isolated from the high street and Tesco by the A23 gyratory”.
A condition survey (carried out at the same time as that on Sanderstead) identified £280,000-worth of urgent or essential work needed for Purley Library (by 2020), for which funds have yet to be found.
So, under these circumstances, and with the council working suspiciously closely with a private developer on other plans for Purley town centre, it seems likely that Purley Library, too, will close at some point.
What has marked out this latest Croydon libraries consultation process is the way that the council has managed to set library against library, neighbourhood against neighbourhood. Supporters of libraries in South Norwood and New Addington appear to have accepted the proposals to downgrade their library service – it beats having their library closed altogether.
Downgraded: South Norwood Library is one of two which consultants recommended to be turned into a ‘hub’
But it has meant that unlike the previous threats to Croydon’s library service that have occurred at regular intervals over the past decade and a half, this time round, there’s been no real, cohesive borough-wide campaign. The number-crunchers at the Town Hall are being allowed to pick off whichever library sites they consider most valuable to potential developers.
Not a peep has been heard from the Labour opposition on the council to this, there’s been silence from the councillors in Broad Green, the one library that’s not in a Conservative-held ward that had been earmarked for closure. That’s possibly because Broad Green’s councillors are useless, and probably because two of them, Newman Numpties Stuart Collins and Manju Shahul Hameed, had key roles in the bankrupting of the borough.
It means that the people of Broad Green will be failed twice over – once with the financial crash, and now the likely closure of their library.
From 13 libraries to nine, maybe eight in a couple of years if Purley goes, too, or just six if you discount the downgraded library services on offer elsewhere. Once gone, these essential community services – as well as books, access to the internet, reading clubs, a true social hub – will be lost forever.
According to the council officials’ report to cabinet in January, 86.78% of respondents to an earlier consultation had put browsing and borrowing books as one of the three most important library services.
But no library is just about books.
Sanderstead has the highest percentage of elderly people in the borough, and they use the library for many different purposes. The library is also used by children, school pupils as a quiet place for homework and by students.
“Sanderstead residents use computers, access the printing and photocopying facilities, attend craft sessions, children’s reading groups, use the WiFi to study on their own laptops and browse leaflets on local activities,” says the campaigner.
“Some people just come in for a chat. A wealth of children have attended the library to take part in the summer reading challenge, a vital initiative that all Croydon’s libraries take part in. But if they couldn’t just pop into the nearby, neighbourhood library as is currently the case, would they bother? Probably not.”
Putting residents further away from their nearest public library will inevitably see some people start driving to their library – hardly a sustainable option.
Hypocrites: the same Croydon Tories who claimed closures to the same libraries in their wards would ‘devastate’ their communities in 2021 are expected to vote for closures in 2024
According to the Activist report, staff and residents think that the current library “offer”, with the majority of the borough’s libraries only open two or three days each week, isn’t working. “It is better to have the nearest library to you open two or three days a week rather than not at all,” according to the campaigner.
The January cabinet report also confirmed a “strong preference from library users for face-to-face services from library staff”.
Said the campaigner: “Sanderstead Library is the one local place where you can go in and have a member of staff try their best to help with a whole host of queries, many community-related, without feeling rushed. This will be the same at the other three libraries under threat, I am sure.
“But from experience, this service isn’t always available for much of the time in some of the larger branches.
“Sanderstead Library has a steady stream of visitors through its doors and acts already as a community hub.”
Under threat: Broad Green is the only library threatened with closure that is not in a Conservative-held council ward
The harsh reality is that council officials, and councillors, have spent the past 15 years – at least – looking for convenient excuses to close three, four or more of our public libraries, removing an essential community service from the public, despite Croydon residents paying the second highest Council Tax in London, for a diminishingly small number of services.
When the latest council reports are published next week, the Conservative Mayor and his Tory cabinet members and senior council directors will no doubt say that the closure of these libraries was not preordained. “But it has been on the council’s agenda since at least 2017, and for all the wrong reasons,” the library campaigner says.
They point to an article that has been published online since August 2021 under a headline “Croydon’s libraries devastated”.
It says: “Our precious libraries are being attacked – the very heart of the community.”
It points to an annual saving of £500,000 in council spending “achieved through this devastation of library provision”.
It continues: “But what about the cost of lost education for Croydon’s youngsters? What about the cost of lost opportunities for Croydon’s residents? Why the rather narrow, mealy-mouthed calculation, which doesn’t take into account the wider costs to Croydon’s people?”
The article, which still sits there, condemning such penny-wise, pound-foolish library closures, is on the website of Jason Perry’s Croydon Conservatives – the very people who are now proposing to make the same “devastating” cuts to our public libraries.
And it says: “This is the consequence of a failed administration.”
So nothing has really changed.
Read more: Comic Kumar’s message for Mayor over Shirley library closure
Read more: Libraries are our long-term investment. Don’t squander it
Read more: Sanderstead among four public libraries under threat of closure
Read more: ‘The council is dismantling our borough, service by service’
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Well done Inside Croydon for this forensic look at the Croydon libraries downgrading saga. Labour and the Tories are as bad as each other on this issue.
Closing libraries is more a sign of a failed society than merely that of a failed administration. Next thing to do is to burn all the books and save money on heating for Jason’s little hideaway.
Just over 5 years ago, Chris Philp started a campaign against “secret plans to close libraries” and was ridiculed by Labour’s Oily Lewis, the Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure & Sport.
However, thanks to everyone who signed up to his pointless spam list (er, “petition” – Ed.), and Jason Perry’s victory over Val Shawcross in the battle to become the first Mayor of Croydon, we now have *public* plans to close libraries.
Well done Croydon Tories! We can now look forward to having a few pennies shaved off our Council Tax bills next April.
There will be no pennies shaved off anyone’s Council Tax in Croydon.
Pay more. Get less.
Exactly. Perry has no rationale for his scorched earth policy. He’ll never clear the council’s debts even if he remained in post as Mayor until he hit his 100th birthday (in 2069).
These are just cuts without reason, a politically dogmatic collective punishment of the public while the guilty (including Tony Newman’s predecessor and Philp’s former government colleagues) have got away scot-free for the mess they made
The people who set up our libraries were making a long-term investment in the future. Not just the current generation or their children but in the next generation and the one after that and so on.
We now have a Mayor and Conservative Councillors who are only thinking about the short-term financial situation. As this article makes clear, Labour before them were no better.
Both of those parties are happy for our money to be used to pay their inflated ‘special responsibility allowances’ even though they don’t actually have any special responsibilities. They also seem happy for our money to be used for yet more consultants and overpaid senior staff, instead of more staff delivering the services we actually need.
We all know that Local Authorities have been starved of funding under fourteen years of Conservative Government and the new Labour Government at the moment are continuing the same ignorant and heartless austerity spending plans. But at some point soon they are going to have to come to their senses otherwise local government is going to collapse completely. In the meantime we need to fight to hang on to our libraries and all our other local assets because if we let the current lot sell them off then we are unlikely to get them back.
“The people who set up our libraries” were capitalists, Peter – a term that is anathema to your party. We should celebrate their benevolence, especially that of the billionaire Andrew Carnegie who built 660 libraries and whose legacy we all benefit from.
Libraries matter and make the lives of people of all ages better, from the small child who is starting to read to the pensioner who wants to get a fix of the latest novel. Irrespective of whether the library is in a wealthy or poor area, the library opens up the chance through group lending schemes and the help from knowledgeable library staff for someone to follow a course of research.
This proposal would make the former librarians of Croydon like Tom Callender (who was very highly thought of in the library world) and Ken Newbury of Coulsdon and Purley UDC and their successors spin in their graves at the vandalism of the foundations of a library service they laid many years ago.
As a very quick PS to this piece, I should also add that while local libraries are often mistakenly seen as places inhabited and run by elderly ladies and children and ‘a cushy number’, librarianship itself is about the science of classifying and assembling knowledge for us to draw upon. In today’s world, perhaps that is the most important function of the concept of libraries.
To deny people easy access to knowledge is a means of perpetuating inequalities in our society.
“The council working suspiciously closely with a private developer on other plans for Purley town centre, it seems likely that Purley Library, too, will close at some point”. Of course it would be. The cosy relationship between planners and developers has been well-documented by Inside Croydon. The Mayor is powerless because the regime at the top of the Council hasn’t changed. Removing Heather Cheesbrough and the other chronic under-performer, Katherine Kerswell, would fund a library with negligible negative impact on Croydon. We’re already paying for a deputy CEO – she could report to the Mayor instead of the current situation where we are duplicating (and paying twice) for an executive.