The Good Library Blog

Thank you very much for this, Mr Apollo. So who would be resonsible for the libraries in my town, if we lived in one of these areas? Who would explain the performance and account for the expenditure of funds to the residents? What recourse would the residents have if they thought the service should be improved; if they didn't like proposed actions, if they knew what they were? Who's in Charge?

Good points, well made.

A Trust's Board would have responsibility for overseeing the service, setting standards and monitoring performance. Service managers would report and be answerable directly to the Board.

The Board would include representatives of the main funding sources, currently but perhaps not always the local authorities. The Board would also, significantly, include user representatives drawn from the community as a whole.

One of the major complaints about council decision-making is that the public are allowed to see only the end of the process, rarely having an opportunity to question or influence it. Contentious decisions can be determined politically rather than objectively, with a ruling party often starving opposition wards of resources or pursuing pet projects at the expense of existing services.

The kind of trust that I am proposing would provide much needed suspension between parochial politics and library services, directly involve the community in their management, maximise funding opportunities and increase the proportion of budgets available for frontline delivery.

Thank you again, Mr Apollo, but forgive me if I argue. It is evident that you don't think that the current political process works, and one can readily see why you say that... something certainly isn't working. However you seem to be proposing just another political process... "representatives drawn from the community as a whole" are exactly what councillors are supposed to be. I'm not sure, as an outsider, why a new political arrangement is likely to work any better than the old one. Won't it just end up the same? Wouldn't it be better to insist that the current management and scrutiny arrangements were operated properly? I believe you can see from the BBC film this week about Hillingdon, that councils can do a perfectly good job, if people do what they should. I'm still not sure from your answer who in the proposed set up is accountable to the public. "A trust's board" is not the same thing as "an elected body" . Reporting to the board is not the same thing as reporting to the public. Do you see? I want to know to whom the public will turn if, for example, it is proposed to close their local library?

Now then Perkins, you can't have it both ways. The model I've outlined includes political representatives (to satisfy the accountants who preside over public funding) but adds 'real people' to add much needed commonsense.

The result is emphatically NOT another political organisation. It protects libraries from being used as political footballs or soft touches when other budgets are squeezed; it gives ordinary people a real say in how they are run; it allows more funding to be raised and all funding to be used more effectively.

If your library is threatened with closure now, you may register your protest with the politicians who run your local council. Under the trust model (far less likely to make a barmy decision anyway), your protest would be heard by a board comprising politicians and lay people.

Is it not better to improve decision-making, broaden representation, increase accountability and pull in and deploy more funding for stock and buildings?