Last night I went to the One Council Scrutiny committee, of which I am now a member. I ended up chairing it as both the Liberal Democrat Chair and Tory Vice Chair were absent.
The first item was a presentation on libraries, a topic with which I am tolerably familiar. The actions that we decided to undertake in our 2011 decision are now either in place or due to be during the coming year. The Committee was impressed by the progress made, and suggested that a similar presentation should be made to the various Brent Connects forums. We also congratulated the officers on the success of the Libraries Transformation Project.
The other major item was the staff restructuring, where there was a lot of disquiet. We agreed to have a fuller report on this in July as there appears to be a danger of considerable delay and cost overruns. It certainly sems that the use of interims, the nature of the staff structure and progress in achieving whatever our goals are supposed to be could all do with fuller scrutiny.
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Dan Jarvis (Labour Shadow Minister for Culture) in his latest Labour Policy Review has said that
'Community, volunteer run libraries should be encouraged and supported where there is no other alternative to closure'.
What a pity they could not have been a welcomed part of the Libraries Transformation Project. You know, 'engaging with communities'.
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