Brent Library Strategy Achievements

Today is the second anniversary of the Brent Library court case hearing, so I thought it would be a good time to review how far we have come.  Those who have somehow managed to miss all the publicity can catch up with the terms of the judgement here.

Physical Refurbishments
We now have five of our libraries recently refurbished and the sixth (Willesden) with rebuilding underway.  The schedule is:

2008: Kingsbury moved to a new High Street location and fitted out
2010: Harlesden opened in March 2010 after a major £2.5 million refurbishment.  This included moving BACES into the upper floors, giving the whole building proper disabled access, introducing a mezzanine floor and completely altering the look of the whole library both internally and externally.
2012 March:  Ealing Road gets refurbished with interior decoration, new shelving and furniture and more computers.
2012 September: Kilburn Library opens after a major refurbishment.  This includes repairing the leaking roof and windows, repairing masonry and guttering, putting in new heating and lighting, rewriting to allow more computers, a total interior refit and more books.
2013 June: Wembley Library opens as Brent's first new library in a quarter of a century. More space, books, iPads, computers.

Distance Services
We have seen an expansion in both the home delivery service for housebound people, and the outreach service.  Outreach is going to many more locations and a much wider variety of sites.  The web pages have been redesigned.  Online reference is improved, and periodicals are now available online.  Ebook lending has been expanded.

Events
A wide variety of events have taken place, including music, dance, book readings, artist workshops, poetry performances and talks on a huge range of subjects.

Courses
Courses on all sorts of subjects have taken place.  These have included CV writing, money management etc.  They also include the Summer Reading Challenge, the Six Book Challenge for adults and regular homework clubs for children.

Books
The book stock budget has been maintained, and about 69,000 new books have been added.  The expansion of the London Lending Consortium means that even more books are order-able.

All this has been done at the same time as the overall library budget has been reduced.

UPDATE

Just had a comment claiming two refurbishments had nothing to do with Labour.  I assume this refers to the major works to Kingsbury and Harlesden Libraries.

Naturally, I supported these in opposition, but they were only possible because we had a Labour government at the time, which gave a much more generous financial settlement to Brent Council and local government in general than is the case now.

Now the question is how much will we be cut by; then, it was how much more will we get?

At the time Tory and Lib Dem councillors criticised the government for not giving enough. Now that their parties are in control of central government, they are strangely silent.