CROYDON IN CRISIS: Tory Mayor is about to rubber-stamp decision which was ridiculed by local Conservative MP as providing savings that represent ‘a drop in the ocean of the council’s debt’. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
Legal issues: the council lawyers claim that covenants over Shirley Library no longer apply. Conveniently
Croydon Mayor Jason Perry will order the closure of four of the borough’s public libraries in a council report due to be released on Monday, Inside Croydon can reveal.
The public libraries in Sanderstead, Bradmore Green in Old Coulsdon, Broad Green and Shirley could be shut down by the cash-strapped council as soon as October.
That’s according to sources at a meeting held between a library friends’ group and Andy Stranack, Perry’s cabinet member for what’s left of Croydon’s culture, who was despatched to do the Mayor’s dirty work for him this week.
The latest libraries consultation was conducted at the start of the year, but the reports arising from that public exercise have been withheld for months by the Tory Mayor in case it might damage the General Election prospects of Croydon South’s Conservative MP, Chris Philp.
The foregone conclusion decision is expected to be made at a council cabinet meeting to be held on September 25. The official papers from the consultation should be available on the council website from September 9.
Six of the borough’s 13 public libraries face closure or being downgraded to “hub” status. The two libraries expected to be reduced in status are New Addington and South Norwood.
Can’t balance his budget: Tory Mayor Jason Perry wants to sell the library sites
Mayor Perry is expected to railroad through the library closures despite the relatively modest savings in annual costs, when compared to the £1.5billion debt mountain he has helped to saddle the borough with, and even though there remains hundreds of thousands of pounds of developers’ cash – CIL, Community Infrastructure Levy – sitting untouched yet available for use for maintenance and repairs on the four buildings.
Meanwhile, “urgent” and “essential” repair work at a number of libraries, including Sanderstead and Shirley, has never been undertaken.
The council is expected to try to flog off the public library sites in Sanderstead, Bradmore Green, Broad Green and Shirley to property developers – in the hope that the money banked will reduce some of the debt.
According to a source at yesterday’s meeting with Stranack, “He told us that the cabinet report will propose the closure of the four libraries.
“This could take place as early as October.
“After the so-called consultation and all the arguments we and other library campaigns have put forward, the cabinet report will be almost exactly the same as the consultants’ report published last year,” the source said.
It is unlikely that Perry and his Tory cabinet’s decision will be the end of the matter, however. Stranack even admitted to last night’s meeting that the council is expecting legal challenges – which could even end up with an expensive visit to the High Court to defend a Judicial Review being considered by some of the library friends groups.
In Shirley, library supporters maintain that their building is subject to a protective legal covenant. Conveniently, the council is claiming that this no longer applies.
According to one Katharine Street source, “Given this council’s appalling record for badly constructed legal cases and expensive, and poor, outside legal advice, it won’t surprise anyone if Croydon ends up spending more on defending the indefensible than it might achieve through savings for the closure of the libraries.”
And it is worth repeating what Conservative MP Chris Philp said on the matter as recently as 2021, just 11 years into his Conservative Government’s deliberate policy of austerity for local councils: “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.”
Meanwhile, not a peep has been heard from the council’s Labour opposition. 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.
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
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.
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.
Read more: Closing libraries is a sign of ‘failed administration’ – say Tories
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: ‘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
Fahrenheit 451 comes to Croydon?
Sad that libraries are being closed. The library service is not what it should be. I’ve found that many libraries do not have a good range of books and this probably puts people off using them.
It is worse than “sad”, Moya.
Depressing news, another thing to add to the dystopian feel of Croydon. Are there any talented, capable, innovative people that want to be Councillors in Croydon? I only ask because the characters Labour and the Cons have churned out the past couple of decades don’t seem up to the task and are only making things worse.
This is exactly what i expect from a bunch of political hacks from BOTH parties this is flogging off the family silver and we will get nothing but more poorly built housing that we cannot afford OR NEED once these VITAL hubs of knowledge have gone they cannot be replaced . sheer greed and incompetence yet again from our council and councillors
At public consultations the Mayor has said that they are trying to put in place community groups who will lease the buildings and run community hubs. The Mayor was especially confident about achieving this at the Sanderstead library.
Will be interesting to see whether this aspiration has been secured.
‘Monorail’
Can you really believe anything that Perry says?
Too many false hopes over the whole town’s situation.
This is exactly the kind of typically short-sighted management decision that comes from mediocre governance. People without the insight or foresight to conceive of how public infrastructure can be harnessed to rebuild the prosperity of a community.
There is a way to turn these facilities into valued and valuable community hubs. I am working with a number of partners to develop a funded strategic plan to regenerate buildings like these to play a pivotal role in building social cohesion, boost the local economy, improve health, alleviate fuel-poverty and mitigate some of the strain of the social care burden. The most important thing is that they remain as community assets in perpetuity.
There is a huge amount of talent and potential within Croydon and beyond that knows the future prosperity of our communities will not be determined from the top down but will emerge from the bottom-up. Community-led and inspired transformation.
As a Croydon resident, I am concerned that simply complaining about the paucity of leadership talent becomes the default response – leading nowhere useful. Love ‘Inside Croydon’ and all the brilliant work you do but wonder if we could develop some positive discourses to counter the interminable trudge through incompetence and failure.
Stories of hope and a more optimistic future in spite of ‘them’ without the expectation that ‘they’ will somehow miraculously change their ways – they won’t.
Newman, Negrini, Fisher, Perry, Philp, Lacey, Kerswell…
“I wonder if we could develop some positive discourses to counter the interminable trudge through incompetence and failure”.
When will the interminable trudge of incompetents and failures end?
I suppose it only ends when their decision-making abilities are shown up as vexatious ineptitude. This will require action as well as words.
Perry is a plastics salesman. WTAF does he know about the value of a library to a community – only the community knows its value. Community should buy it and show Plastic-Perry what real community power looks like.
When he turns up at the reopening you photograph him being excluded.
Please elaborate on “the huge amount of talent and potential within Croydon and beyond.” Is this just in your imagination?
He said Croydon, not the nether regions of Kenley
The people and businesses that I have interacted with over the years. I have a terrible affliction that means I tend to see the best in people and a majority of them don’t disappoint. Maybe I’m just lucky.
Of course. I was really thinking of the Town Hall. Sorry
‘Monorail
[What I hear every time a councillor opens his mouth]