I gather that Brent Council is once again contemplating hiving libraries off into some sort of trust. Hopefully, there will be less confusion that when this was last mooted. Since I last considered the possibilities, we have seen the collapse of Carillion, which I thought greatly reduced the appetite for this kind of thing.
One approach that is said to work in Merton is the greater use of volunteers to supplement library staff in Council run buildings. I don't know whether this would work, but so far no one seems to have studied the idea.
Unfortunately, the taskforce that came up with this proposal also swallowed a number of other library myths. One is that the Council had not considered the idea of volunteer groups in its 2011 strategy, which is to quote from the judge at the time "simply wrong". Almost a dozen groups put in proposals which were rejected for various reasons, including cost. The best known of these was the FKRL group proposal. The subsequent reliance of this group on the Council for funding suggests to me that the decision was in fact prescient. It is disappointing that the councillors seem to be unaware of the success of Brent libraries, even though they passed a motion on the subject not so long ago.
However, the task force is certainly right in identifying this as a bad area to cut, especially as demands on the library service go up.
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