Story & photo: Douglas Johnson
The Council is about to start a 12-week consultation, now it has announced its proposal to close some libraries. 11 community Libraries are to be saved but the rest will lose their staff and most will close. Burngreave Library has not made it on to the list of 11. Councillor Mazher Iqbal explained,
“The reason it was not in the priority list was due to the distance to the Central Library and the number of registered users potentially affected.”
Libraries in the top 11 – which include Firth Park – will be upgraded. For five of the remaining libraries, the Council is offering to pay the running costs (but not staff). Burngreave is a priority to be one of these five, but it depends on a voluntary organisation coming forward to run it.
Three organisations previously showed interest in running Burngreave Library: Regional Language Network and Creative Pathways (both social enterprises) and SOAR (Southey and Owlerton Area Regeneration). Four organisations expressed interest in taking over all the city’s libraries. However, the Council has now confirmed organisations will get no funding and it is hard to see how other groups can provide the necessary resources to run and staff a library.
A community group would not even get the use of the library building. As reported in the August Messenger, the Council intends to move Burngreave Library to a smaller space in Sorby House. Last issue we asked why the plans showed no serving desk or staff office: now we know.
The Council has partly based its decision on the number of registered users, which is an odd way to measure usage when anyone can use any library. Many people may not remember if they registered at Burngreave Library or the Central one or at a previous address. However, one interesting fact in the Council’s statistics is that, when looking at adult library users who choose to register at their local library instead of elsewhere, only 4 libraries beat Burngreave. That suggests Burngreave’s library users are confident in their local service and prefer not to travel into town.
Under-18s are far more likely to register locally, which is noticeable in Burngreave where the library is very popular for computer access, for homework and leisure.
The plans are to save £1.6 million in total over two years, a fairly modest saving from the current annual library budget of £6.4 million per year.
A consultation on the plans will run from October to January but no closures are planned before April 2014.