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30 November 2006

Hampshire slashes library staff
Hampshire County Council is to cut its library staff by 30% following a review of leisure and heritage department spending. A council spokeswoman also confirmed that £250,000 of the authority's £2m book fund for the year has been earmarked to be moved, if the recreation and heritage department fails to break even by next April. One commentator called the move the most dramatic cut in library resources by any county this year. Up to 20 jobs are at risk.

Councillor Margaret Snaith, executive member for recreation and heritage, played down the impact of the review on library spending, and promised employees that the council would avoid forced redundancies if at all possible. She said: "We can reassure staff that we will use every measure we can to minimise job losses by, for example, seeking volunteers for early retirement or redundancy."

But Desmond Clarke, chairman of library charity and lobby group Libri, accused the council of diverting library funds to pay for a customer contact call centre.
He said that the council has already cut the book fund by £500,000 in the past two years and, as a result, the number of books in Hampshire's libraries has declined by 20%.

"What is shocking is that this appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to an overspend and the need for a contact centre," he said. "It isn't a properly thought-out strategy."

The review in Hampshire comes as Devon County Council decided to close four libraries and hand a further seven over to specially created community partnerships.
However, the council also said it aimed to open two new libraries in other towns and invest in technology to extend library opening times.

Publishing News

Hampshire libraries hit
Staffing to be cut by over 25%

MORE THAN A quarter of professional library staff in Hampshire are due to lose their jobs following an attempt by the local council to make up for a budget deficit.
The Conservative-run council, which has said it will not close any of its 54 branches, is seeking to save £1m from job losses and it has also removed £250,000 from its £2m book fund. It is believed that between 20 and 23 of the 80 professional staff in the region will lose their jobs, and the council is seeking voluntary redundancies in the next two weeks. A final decision is expected in January.
Librarians in the area have expressed their concern to Unison and to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, whose Head of Policy and Governance, Guy Daines, said: “We are investigating the issue and a letter was sent to Hampshire Council last week seeking clarification on the precise nature of what is being proposed.”
Local Liberal Democrat councillor, Peter Chegwyn, told PN that the cuts will have a “devastating” effect on service and book stock. “Staff are not taking this lying down. Fewer books and fewer staff are not the way to encourage more people to use libraries. This is not the first cut to the service, as it has already lost £1m in the last five years, and a further loss of over 20 professional librarians and £250,000-worth of books is staggering.”
The Council has defended the cuts, saying that the borough has the highest proportion of professional librarians to service size of any council in the country, and that the number of library assistants will remain the same.