More on Libraries

Thanks to Sagar Shah for his thoughtful post here.  The concerns I have over the delay in judgement are several, but I thought I would respond to the ones Sagar raises.

a) Yes, some of the staff have expressed frustration at not being given a redundancy date.  Among other things it presumably makes it harder to apply to other employers if you can't tell them when you will be available.
b) Secondly, there are difficulties keeping the libraries open on the current basis as some of the staff are leaving either through early retirement or otherwise.  This creates all kinds of practical diffciulties in running the library service.  The litigants are currently threatening us with further court action if we make any changes at all to the service.
c) The concern on budget overspend is that keeping the status quo entails something like £20k per week.  A few weeks delay quickly adds up to a substantial overspend.  Of course, this overspend will have to be recovered elsewhere in the budget.  I doubt whether any of the litigants would care to explain to whoever suffers from the consequent cuts why their services deserve to be cut.
d) The point about the taxpayer paying the bills at the end of Sagar's point is actually one of the things I find most absurd.  Yes, the Council bills are paid by the taxpayer, but there is a difference in that the Council Executive are responsible for the expenditure and explain it.  Neither the litigants or their lawyers seem to be under a similar obligation.  However, in deciding to fund the case the Legal Services Commission is making sure that the taxpayer is paying for both sides of the same action.  Is there not something a bit barmy about that?
e) Finally, I am not going to react to any judgement until I hear what it is.  I certainly expect the Court to uphold the Council's position, but there is no point in speculating.

Of course, the original point of asking for an expedited hearing was precisely that a quick outcome would be beneficial.  That point is rather lost if there is no decision.

One last point that the litigants appear to have forgotten is that any outcome to the Court case does not change the financial situation, or the current weaknesses in the service that the Libraries Transformation Project seeks to address.  If the decision is quashed, the Council will have to take a second look at the service in a very similar context to the decision in April.