This has been sent to all Birmingham’s Councillors by the Friends of the Libraries of Birmingham
Dear Councillor, we are writing to you concerning the threat to Birmingham’s libraries in the current exercise to reduce BCC’s budgets.
You will recall the drastic cuts to The Library of Birmingham (LoB) in 2015 and the subsequent cuts to community libraries, which have left the library service in the position where any further cutbacks would substantially change its nature and reduce it to an unacceptable level for a statutory service. The second concern is that the Non-Statutory Services Consultation Survey on BCC’s Birmingham Be Heard website is framed in such a way that it will give an artificially low representation of public support for the library service – and possibly for some other statutory and non-statutory services.
2) THE CURRENT POST-CUTS POSITION OF LIBRARIES
i) libraries aim to provide a wide range of services beyond the lending of books. These include knowledgeable and enthusiastic support to users by qualified staff dealing with a range of enquiries from, among others, researchers, organisations, school pupils, many of whom need a quiet space in which to do homework and part-time students. Libraries provide free access to computers.
Members of the public rely on libraries as a safe and trusted public space, as was demonstrated when they were designated as Warm Spaces which supported hundreds of people during the current and previous winters and the cost of living crisis. Many of these services have disappeared or have been significantly reduced. Once they go, you never get them back.
Despite the cuts, library staff in Birmingham have continued to provide a high level of service which is highly valued.
ii) ‘hubbing’, often mentioned as a form of cuts, is where a library service is moved into a space shared by other organisations where, at its worst, the ‘service’ becomes books on a few shelves in a corner of a room, with ‘the library’ open only a few timesa fortnight. Moving other organisations into a library building has a similar effect. Replacing a library building with what is called a mobile ‘library’, is yet another form of cut.
iii) in relation to BCC’s overall budget, what can seem to managers like small sums can do immense damage to the library service, as we saw in the previous BCC budget crisis. And the effects are long lasting. We are in the position where further cuts would put Birmingham in breach of its statutory obligation under The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to provide ‘a comprehensive and efficient service’.
3) THE BIRMINGHAM BE HEARD CONSULTATION EXERCISE
i) this consultation is mis-named. It is called Non-Statutory Services Consultation, although it covers statutory as well as non-statutory services. It is not user-friendly. It asks just three sets of questions. One of these gives a list of 33 services and asks respondents to pick their top five from this list and rank them in a league table.
ii) the way in which the survey is designed makes it likely to produce artificially low scores for the smaller services. Few will rank libraries above e.g. child protection, care and support for families etc., even if they consider libraries to be important to themselves and to the community. But the results could encourage the Cabinet and/or the Commissioners to say ‘the public does not think that libraries are important’ and claim that any decision to cut them is not their decision, they are just following the public.
iii) this survey should not be used in decision-making. What is needed is a more nuanced – and much more widely publicised – consultation on the whole of the budget reduction. You will recall that previously BCC used to run annual, public in-person consultation exercises on its budget plans before implementation. On the current exercise it is noticeable that, although the Commissioners began work in early October, there has been no information on their progress on their website, nor on BCC’s website, which it committed to use to report on the Commissioners’ activities. Surely there must be some output from the three months in which the Commissioners have been in post?
iv) to move from secrecy to openness, the best form of proper consultation would be a public consultation meeting on the overall BCC budget reduction process (in-person and online), fronted by a panel of BCC Cabinet members and a member of the group of Commissioners.
The latter is a group of (temporary) public officials who are deciding the fate of the people and organisations. There is no reason why they should not share their thoughts with us. There must be much that they could tell us without needing to plead confidentiality.
v) In the case of the library service, if cuts are contemplated, there should be a serious review of what would be left of the already post-2015 heavily hollowed-out service and whether it meets the requirement of the 1964 Act to provide a comprehensive, efficient, properly funded and improving service for Britain’s second city. We maintain that the 2015+ cuts left the service in no position to absorb further reductions without serious damage.
Martin Sullivan
Friends of the Libraries of Birmingham
Birmingham Against The Cuts 