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April 26, 2006
Little Chalfont library
Buckinghamshire are proposing to close 8 of their libraries. Across the country we have now heard of more than a 100 proposed closures.
It is frustrating that, in my view, there is no need for any of these closures. If they do take place, a service which took 150 years to accumulate suitable useful properties in which to operate will have gone and will never come back. In the UK it is really hard to find a collection of buildings of this kind and it took enormous resilience and creativity to establish them. Those who are now ending their days seem to have no feel for the irreversibility of what they are doing.
In Buckinghamshire, as elsewhere, when seeking a budget saving the council appears to have preferred to cut service to the public rather than council overhead. Personally, I would have sold the county hall before closing a library
The BBC today filmed a news item showing the people of Little Chalfont protesting nobly against the closures and fighting hard to meet the needs of the strange proposal that has been made by their elected council. Bucks County council appear to be saying that - having already paid £90,000 per annum for a library- the people of Little Chalfont will forfeit both the library and their own money unless they stump up a further £40,-50,000pa; and they will have to run it themselves. The same idea has been put forward in seven other villages. I can't believe that a barrister or a district auditor, or even a trading standards officer would allow such a scheme to proceed, but that is what, if I have understood it, is to happen. It is like the awful occasion when a cowboy builder takes your money for mending the sink and then demands more to stop the waste from leaking all over the floor.
Perhaps I have got it wrong, but anyhow I have written to officers of the council with some suggestions about how we could find another way forward. I do hope we can at least have a meeting. If we do meet I shall suggest ways in which they can manage their "back office" operation with less cost and allow more funds to the operation of the libraries themselves. There are ways to bring this about and I would do the same anywhere.
Posted by Tim Coates at April 26, 2006 9:46 PM