CROYDON IN CRISIS: Residents’ groups in the south of the borough accuse the Mayor, and the council, of not listening, and raise serious doubts about proposals to transfer maintenance funds to other areas. By our libraries correspondent, GENE BRODIE
Facing the axe: Bradmore Green Library has one of the best value-for-money figures of all the borough’s libraries, but Tory Mayor Jason Perry wants to close the service in Old Coulsdon
Four of Croydon’s public libraries, at Bradmore Green in Old Coulsdon, at Sanderstead, Shirley and Broad Green, will all close in six weeks’ time, under recommendations from the borough’s Tory Mayor, Jason Perry, which are expected to be rubber-stamped by the pliant Tory councillors in his cabinet at a meeting later this month.
The long-awaited cabinet report (or at least, most of it) was finally published today – a day later than promised, following a consultation that ended six months ago.
The four library closures will save around £500,000 per year, for a local authority with debts totalling £1.5billion. It’s a saving that was described as “a drop in the ocean” by Conservative MP Chris Philp, when he was opposing similar closures when Labour was in charge of the council. Nothing else has changed, just the colour of the rosette of the person in charge this time.
“It is quite clear from the cabinet report that the council has largely ignored the views of local people,” Hugh Atkinson, from the Save Shirley Library campaign, told Inside Croydon.
For the chop: Shirley Library is one of four public libraries that will close next month, under Tory plans
“The evidence from the council’s consultation process showed very strong opposition to library closures. Yet we hear the shocking news that the council will close four libraries by October 25.
“This will take away an important lifeline for many people, especially families with young children, the elderly and the disabled.
“The council accepts this but is pushing on with its cruel library closures regardless.”
The council’s announcement and report has come without the full data or detail from its public consultation held earlier this year, which will do nothing to reduce library campaigners’ suspicions that the council is (again) playing fast and loose with the figures and hiding the true findings of the consultation.
No one believed that this exercise was in any way being done objectively. A consultants’ report a year ago had, surprise, surprise, come to much the same conclusions as two previous reports had: having 13 libraries in the borough costs more to run than having 10, or nine, or eight…
The end result is that the people of Croydon, with the second highest Council Tax in London, are paying more and getting less.
Council officials, and Labour and Conservative councillors, have spent the past 15 years – at least – looking for convenient excuses to close some of Croydon’s 13 public libraries, thus removing an essential community service from the public. Given the council directors’ continuing enthusiasm for such service cuts, it exposes the real powerlessness of the borough’s elected representatives.
The absence of the fully detailed consultation report makes any objective assessment of the closures, and the vitally important equalities impact assessment that ought to have been conducted, impossible.
It is also impossible to judge whether porkie pie Perry is telling the truth when he said today, “Residents have told us that despite the best efforts of library staff, the current model simply isn’t working.”
The smart money is that, at best, piss-poor Perry is being disingenuous. With the majority of Croydon’s public libraries closed most of the time, of course they are “not working”. Perry’s answer to the demand for longer, more convenient opening hours, though, is to close Sanderstead, Shirley, Bradmore Green and Broad Green.
And promises from Tory councillor and cabinet member Andy Stranack to provide the council’s legal advice on the status of restrictive covenants over the use of one of the doomed libraries, Shirley, have also been broken.
The cabinet report makes recommendations that, “despite the council’s challenging financial position, library service budgets should be retained, and investment should be made to increase staffing and improve the universal library service offer across the borough”.
The council report says: “By closing four libraries and reinvesting money from library building costs to library services, the council can adopt a better value and more sustainable service.”
But what the council omits to mention is that it has special, ring-fenced funds – CIL money, from the Community Infrastructure Levy, paid for by developers – hundreds of thousands of pounds which has been earmarked for repairs and buildings maintenance for at least three years, and not a penny of that money has been spent.
Since 2020, about £800,000 per year has been sucked out of the borough’s libraries budget. That was the year when the libraries were first closed because of covid and then mostly did not return to full-time operation because of the council’s financial collapse.
Doomed: Broad Green Library
Under the council’s “new model” unveiled in this report, “All nine libraries will be open five days a week, including Saturdays.” This will be welcomed by most of the borough, and will undoubtedly lead to an increase in library use. Except, of course, in those areas where the public libraries are to be closed permanently.
“The proposed model includes an increase in staffed opening hours overall, retaining and investing in nine buildings and establishing a dedicated resource to deliver outreach, events and books in other community settings to reach new audiences with library services.”
As an example of how poorly cobbled-together the proposals are, among these “outreach” services is a once-a-week bus service to ferry pensioners from one part of the borough that is to lose its library, to another area, which has been lucky in Perry’s postcode lottery to keep its library.
All local authorities in England and Wales have a statutory duty to provide a public library service.
What no one has ever established is to what level that library service needs to be delivered. In a geographically large borough, such as Croydon, with a population of close to 400,000, nine libraries can only provide a far inferior service than 13. Perhaps the council’s “new model” will fail to meet the legal requirements?
The council makes much of that fact – one of the few to support its argument for closures – that just 10% of the borough’s residents use its libraries. The context for that, though, is that for the last four years, most of Croydon’s libraries remain closed for four or five days of every week, making it impossible for many people to use them.
Tory U-turn: in 2021, Sanderstead’s Conservative councillors were opposing closure of Sanderstead Library. Now the deputy mayor, Lynne Hale (left) is supporting its closure wholeheartedly…
The council claims its proposals have been “developed based on extensive research and listening to residents”. Were the councillors on the council’s scrutiny committee really on top of their briefs, council officials’ more obviously tendentious claims could be unpicked at a Town Hall meeting next week, ahead of the cabinet on September 25.
“The council must change the way it provides library services,” a press release issued by the propaganda department said. “The proposed new model would see the council reinvest resources, to provide a more tailored library service that reaches more residents and better meets their needs.”
New Addington, Purley, South Norwood, Coulsdon and Thornton Heath libraries will have the much-criticised self-service provision introduced. Purley – which the consultants’ report last year criticised as being difficult to access because of its location in the middle of a busy road junction – will get a new classroom on the premises, while South Norwood will be joined to the neighbouring Samuel Taylor Coleridge Youth Centre.
The New Addington “hub” is to incorporate adult learning and training provision.
The council has deliberately set out to deceive the Council Tax-paying public, claiming that the closures of Bradmore Green, Broad Green, Sanderstead and Shirley “will allow funding currently spent on building costs, to be used to extend opening hours and services at the remaining nine libraries”.
Missing reports: Jason Perry and his cabinet member for anti-culture, Andy Stranack (right), reckon closing libraries is the right solution
According to a member of the Save Sanderstead Library campaign: “But the council has not been spending any money on maintenance at our local library in Sanderstead – even from the CIL funds that were set aside more than three years ago for the purpose.”
“So how can money ‘currently spent on building costs’ be spent elsewhere, when they haven’t been spending the money for works that the council itself admitted was ‘urgent’ and essential’?”
And then there’s this troubling little snippet: “The Executive Mayor is committed to supporting community and voluntary organisations to keep buildings where the library is closing, in community use. The council will be arranging a series of workshops to support others to take on the buildings.” They promise “further details” to be available in October, but when it will be far too late to change the closure decision.
Indeed, buried deep in the report is a proposal to give £20,000 of CIL money to community groups to run “community libraries”. But that modest sum – less than one-quarter of the annual salary paid to Mayor Perry – is for just two years – after which, the volunteers will be completely pot-less.
“We know how loved and valued our Croydon library service is,” Mayor Perry was quoted as saying, before announcing the closure of one-quarter of that library service.
“Residents have told us that despite the best efforts of library staff, the current model simply isn’t working – following past budget cuts, residents have ended up with a model that is the worst of both worlds. It isn’t efficient, it isn’t cost effective and most importantly, it isn’t available when people want to use it.”
Perry claims to “have listened” to the consultation. “We… understand that residents do not want libraries to close…
“The decision to close library buildings is a very difficult one and I know people who are losing their local library will be sad to see it go. I am committed to supporting community and voluntary organisations with an interest in taking on a building to keep these well-loved buildings in community use.
“Resident feedback from the consultation has helped us to design the new model and outreach service in the areas where we are proposing to close library buildings, so that services are easy to access and available to as many residents as possible.”
Library supporters say that Perry contradicts himself in his own words. “How can you make library access to as many residents as possible if you are closing one-quarter of them?” one resident pointed out.
And Atkinson, from Shirley, said, “Despite the so-called consultation and the views of local people, the proposals outlined in this cabinet report are virtually the same as those in the Activist Report published last year.
“The council is, once again, simply not listening to local people.”
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
Q: What do you call a fake noodle?
A: An impasta!
Q:What do you call a gorilla with a banana in each ear?
A: Anything you like, he can’t hear you!
Q: What do you call a two-faced Mayor who doesn’t really listen?
A: Jason Perry
Closing four out of 13 libraries is far more than a quarter of them; it is nearly a third being closed !?!
Oh dear this is a miserable, short-sighted decision. Savings probably peanuts.
My ‘consultation’ email says that only 10 percent of us use our libraries. That tells me that despite all these claims that we love our libraries … we don’t. They are closing because 90 percent of us don’t use our libraries. Nothing can survive that complete lack of interest.
Only 10% of us use libraries because most libraries are only open 25% of the time.
You really need to be very dense to fall for Piss-poor’s consultants’ bollocks. On the axe list are two of the best-used libraries. It’s utter idiocy.
Can Jason Perry tell the pensioners of Old Coulsdon where their nearest warm hub will be this winter ?
It certainly won’t be in their homes, thanks to this vindictive Labour Government.
Sorry to add to the negativity but it simply doesn’t matter what residents say atm, the council have already decided what they will do and these “consultations” are a total waste of time. In an internal email this was all framed as a positive thing, watch the closed libraries get sold off to developers within months if not weeks.