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March 24, 2007
Throw away £80m of Lottery money- just when we need it
Last year The Times made a proper fuss when the Big Lottery announced it would grant £80m to public libraries, but none of that would be spent on books.
David Lammy retorted in Parliament by saying
"as the members of the former Culture Select Committee pointed out in its report last year, not all of our libraries are new and gleaming. Many need at least some additional tender loving care.
So I find it hard to understand why the Big Lottery Fund’s announcement of an £80m community library programme strand is criticised because none of the money will be spent on books! "
Since he said that the MLA has reported that 70% of library buildings are not in a fit state for their purpose-- and that the repairs will cost £600-£800m
Now we discover that the £80m is not to be spent on the repair of library buildings or on community libraries either, but on "community projects". As every council in the country will tell you at the moment, they are filling in the forms desperately applying for this money, not to be spent mending roofs and repairing rotten window frames, but on projects for which so called "communities" have been asked to sign up so that the council can indulge in some daft project which in 5 years will have proved no use to anyone.
This is a great shame because, as anyone seriously concerned about saving our libraries would have told you-- we need that money for urgent restoration work of buildings and book collections.
Posted by Perkins at March 24, 2007 12:48 PM
Comments
Hello Mr Coates, I just found your lovely blog. Leslie Gilbert, Adam Gee and I run a support group for our local library in East Finchley. We have about 200 members and we miraculously managed to persuade our council to put in a bid to the Big Lottery Fund. Quite an investment of time (for us) and money (for the council - proper architectural drawings & so on). We cooked up a plan for a Dyslexia Centre to go in the upstairs meeting room of our beautiful Grade II listed branch (which would have necessitated a lift of course to comply with the DDA). Sadly we heard in September that we were unsuccessful (sniff). Probably you already know this, but we were told that 130 local authorities put in bids which totalled £180 million pounds. So well oversubscribed on the £80m on offer despite the really very onerous nature of the application process. I think this speaks of the desperation of Local Authorities and library services across the country.
Posted by: Polly Napper at February 4, 2008 10:56 PM