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July 19, 2006
London Borough of Lambeth
Reading the Guardian article (see next entry) in which one of the librarians moans about how the library service is underfunded and librarians are underpaid, I was reminded of the London Borough of Lambeth
Here sits the Brixton central library and the famous and wonderful Herne Hill Carnegie library. The council has begun to restore the buildings, for which they deserve congratulation. Indeed there is a new party in power since May and I hear they have called for a further programme, which is good news.
But the librarian who moaned to the Guardian would do well to check the figures. What he or she said is not universally true. Anyone would presume from looking at many libraries that funding is short, but in Lambeth the people of the Borough (which like most London Boroughs is a mix of poor and wealthy residents) pay £6.2m each year for nine libraries. The average employment cost is £37,000 per library employee and only about 4.5% of that taxpayers funding is spent on books. There is a lot to be done, but charging customers more for the service is not always the first place to look.
I know this is completely exceptional and my friends in Cornwall will jump, correctly, to say it isn't like that everywhere. But the library service in Lambeth actually isn't very good. They score (at the moment and for a long time past) the Audit Commission and PLSS equivalent of nul points. So a taxpayer would reasonably say: "Why is money the answer? If the management can not do better with twice the amount of money, do they know how to spend money properly? And until they can demonstrate that they do, to give them more is to throw it away"
That is just one example, but to save the MLA spending £200,000 on consultants to see if it is a valid observation, I can tell them that it is. Money does not appear to be the answer and lack of it is not the problem. That is true for Revenue expenditure and Capital expenditure- and I am not alone in saying this. The Audit Commission said it eight years ago in a report called "Due for Renewal" which is as relevant now as it was then.
Until the profession agrees to listen to the advice it is given no one can reasonably believe an argument for funding the library service at all (and certainly not more than now).
Posted by Tim Coates at July 19, 2006 7:25 PM