Community Libraries Come Back to the Brent Council Cabinet

Coming up at the next Brent Cabinet is a paper on Brent's policy on Community Libraries, which strikes me as being very similar to the one passed in the Libraries Transformation Project back in April 2011.  Given the obvious success of Brent Libraries that is probably unsurprising. 

The new document tells us that:

"The Council has reviewed its working relationship with the four independent community library groups in the borough in order to agree and implement partnership arrangements. These libraries are constitutionally and operationally independent of the Council and do not form part of its statutory provision of library services. They are run by local voluntary and community sector organisations who have a strong sense of independence and individual visions for their community libraries." (3.1)

In other words they are in no sense part of Brent Council, and the Council has no financial liability for them, and no committment to manage them in any way.  That is thoroughly sensible.

Two of the groups faced up to this long ago, with both the Cricklewood (FOCL) and the Kensal Rise (FKRL) organisations raising their own funding and making their own decisions without any reference to the Council.  FOCL have not released any figures on their funding but they have largely completed their building, which (unlike the old Cricklewood Library) is DDA compliant.  FKRL have reportedly raised £160k in capital, an impressive sum which has come almost entirely from sources other than the Council and therefore directly adds to the social capital of the Borough.  The altered Kensal Rise building should also be DDA compliant.  Again this will be an improvement on the old building. 

However there are still worries about the other two buildings.  It is no coincidence that the Council remains entangled as the landlord in both cases.  In Barham, Paul Lorber appears to be trying to play the Council for either financial gain or as part of his political manoeuvrings prior to the 2018 elections.  In Preston, the existing group appears to be given an undue influence that does not sit easily with either the Council's financial obligations or the building's ACV status.  Such arrangements can lead to ugly rumours about the integrity of Council decision making even where there is no legally proven case against them.