Localism in Devon means helping the unemployed find jobs

Cllr John Hart, the Leader of Devon County Council, says libraries can be used to help enterprises and communities flourish

There is a lot talked about localism, but in Devon - the third largest local authority by area in the country - we’re trying to put it into practice.

We are a very diverse county which includes the city of Exeter, numerous market and coastal towns and many small villages encompassing two coastlines and two national parks.

So it makes real sense to do only what needs to be done centrally at County Hall in Exeter with as much as possible being carried out locally.

We are delighted that Ilfracombe, in the north of the county, is one of the two rural towns piloting the national neighbourhood community budget pathfinder programme. This is in its early days so far but we are committed to the transfer of assets, and citizens have already set up a local board to run their community.

Whenever we build new libraries, we now develop them as community hubs. So in Newton Abbot, Cullompton and Totnes we are ensuring there is enough community space to enable people to gather together.

We have got work hubs in these buildings - as well as in other centres around the county - where Devon’s large contingent of home-workers and small enterprises can rent space and secretarial support – by the hour if they wish – to help their businesses to grow.

We also have information and advice to help support people back into work. Indeed, our Free Fridays provide free computer access in all our libraries for jobseekers and people seeking information about welfare changes.

After the appalling winters of the last few years, we have supplied grit, training and equipment for local volunteers to become snow wardens and clear the roads in their communities which – with more miles of road than Belgium – the county council cannot get to.

We have helped local people develop plans to support the elderly and vulnerable in their communities in the event of emergencies like floods or power cuts. This is necessary because, in a largely rural county like ours, it sometimes takes time to get the utilities back on and restore communities to normal.

Localism is all about developing resilience and helping people to help themselves. After four years of budget cuts, and with more to come, it is vital we reinvigorate the spirit of self-help in our communities.

In Devon I have pioneered a way of helping this process practically with our joint Town and Parish Fund.

Each of our 62 county councillors has £10,000 available to support community groups and organisations in their ward through our Locality Fund. We have also allocated £1 for every elector into our Town and Parish Fund, which is shared out to each district council area, and we have encouraged the district councils to top that up with 10p per elector.

It is then for the towns and parishes to bid for this TAP Fund money to develop projects and initiatives locally to help themselves.

Together the TAP Fund and the Locality Fund cost the county £1.2 million. But it is money well spent in bringing communities together to work on schemes of their choice to enhance their localities, often boosting our seed money with extra revenue raised from other sources.

Following examples like these is perhaps another way the Government could drive forward the new localism agenda, by codifying the relationship between national and local government and giving local councils more power to raise taxes and spend the money where they think it will do the most good for their communities.

This piece appears as part of a collection of essays on the future of local government collated by the New Local Government Network.

Privatising libraries is better than closing libraries

Tim Grier, the Managing Director of John Laing Integrated Services, gave an interesting talk at the recent Conservative Way Forward Local Government conference. In 2008 the then Conservative-led Hounslow Council awarded his firm a ground breaking 15 year contract to manage Libraries - alongside a 10 year contract to run parks, heritage buildings and allotments.

Mr Grier reports:

The cost of running the library service was reduced by £1.25m immediately and has reduced by 30% in total since 2008 – and all 11 libraries remain open and for longer hours than is stated in the contract, at the same time significant refurbishment, colocation with leisure services, replacing all the public computers, installing wireless in the libraries and using technology to free up the staff to serve the community.

And within the 30% reduction in cost the percentage back office costs have gone from 39% to 24% and therefore the costs directed front line up from 61% to 76%. Less time on bureaucracy, less waste - so the Public get more for less.

Labour implode in Brent

Generally councils of all political persuasions have coped with very well with spending cuts, in terms of maintaining the services that matter to their residents. Labour-run Brent is an unhappy exception. They decided the best way to save money was to close half their libraries - thus spurning the offer of volunteers to keep them going.

This seems to have caused a backlash by Labour members in the borough. Cllr Ann John - who was the council leader until last year - has been deselected as a Labour candidate fro next year's elections. So has Cllr Colom Moloney - one of her fellow ward councillors. Cllr James Powney has also been ditched.

The new regime now say they want to "work with" the library campaigners "moving forwards" but the buildings have already been sold off. The new leadership are culpable as they voted through the closures. If they had wanted to stop them the time for a coup d'etat was two or three years ago.

Still, I suppose the change of approach is welcome. The Labour Party nationally has tended to excuse Labour councils cutting services saying central government was to blame for spending cuts which left "no alternative." Labour in Brent said the spending cuts meant "inevitably" closing the libraries. It is now apparent that not even the Labour Party own members are convinced by this claim.

Boost in library volunteers

Say what you like about the Big Society but if you want to see it in action take a visit to your local library.

In 2009/10 the annual CIPFA Libraries survey recorded that there were 17,550 library volunteers, in 2010/11 it was 21,494 and in 2011/12 it was 23,397. That has made a fantastic contribution to the library service. In many cases volunteers have taken over libraries which councils could not afford to keep going - the result has been longer opening hours, more visitors and books being read.

There have been some library closures (overwhelmingly under Labour councils.) But also new libraries opening (usually under the Conservatives.) In total the number of libraries is down but often it is small or mobile libraries closing and big libraries opening. Spending is down by 10% over the last couple of years to under a billion pounds. But much of that saving has come in back office costs.

While there have been well publicised areas of decline, such as Brent, overall the library service is being enhanced while the cost is being reduced. Volunteering is a vital component in this being possible.

Conservative councils are opening new libraries

Recently I wrote about how the number of library closures is pretty low and how those we have seen have been overwhelmingly from Labour councils.   They are responsible for 41 closures against the 14 that are the responsibility of Conservative councils. Those figures cover the last financial year and this year since April. There are over 4,000 libraries in the UK.

However, this is only one chapter in the story. There is also the matter of the new libraries opening, which I fear has not attracted enough interest for The Independent to splash across their front page - or even make into a small paragraph on page 27.

With the county council elections next year, we have several Conservative councils that have managed to open new libraries, despite the well known cuts in the central Government grant. Thus we can be proud of Conservative councils delivering more for less - cuts in spending combined with better services.

Library closures are overwhelmingly taking place under Labour councils

Recently there was a press release from the Shadow Culture Minister Dan Jarvis highlighting the number of library closures and blaming the Government. It got prominent space in The Independent.

However the attack by Mr Jarvis was misconceived on several levels. First of all he tried to conflate the number of libraries closing, and the number that are being kept open and run by volunteers. "157 libraries have been reported shut down or handed over to unpaid volunteers since April 2011," he says. Mr Jarvis does not reveal his source for this figure. However I have discovered it is Ian Anstice's blog Public Libraries News.

Why was Mr Jarvis so shy about acknowledging his source? I suspect the reason is that the more you look at the details assembled by Mr Anstice the more discreditable they are to the Labour Party.

For a start, the blog lists 46 libraries closed in the last financial year, and 13 since April 1st this year. So that's 59. To suggest that those libraries where volunteers are involved are in the same category as those being closed is insulting. Take this example in Bexley. It will be run by a charity but there will still be professional librarians as well as volunteers; the opening hours wil be longer; the number of books you will be allowed to borrow will increase. Would Mr Jarvis like to visit and tell them their efforts are worthless?

Does Mr Jarvis believe that Croxteth Library, run as a community library, might just as well be close? Book lending is 500% up compared to when it was run by Liverpool City Council.

Why are the sexual preferences of Islington's residents any of its council's business?

By Paul Goodman
^{Follow Paul on Twitter}

Islington Council already has form on asking residents about their sexual orientation if they want to borrow a library book.

My colleague Harry Phibbs has written about the matter on this site previously, arguing correctly that local authorities should not be sex snoopers.

Now I see that Islington has been at it again: the Telegraph reported late last week that the council has accidentally published personal details of over 2000 people online.

These included "the names, addresses, relationship status, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual preferences of 2,400 people re-housed by the council".

It goes almost without saying that Islington's blunder was a breach of the data protection act.  But it should also be asked what the council was doing collecting this data in the first place.

(The Telegraph didn't pursue this question, devoting its report instead to a very full account of Islington's blunder.)

The council cannot blame central government.  Because as Harry pointed out, Eric Pickles has issued guidance stating that there is no requirement for councils to issue such surveys.

The guidance was contained in a single page - which replaced the 56 pages of John Prescott’s so-called ‘Best Value’ guidance.

Footnote: all's well that ends well, since the council said that it would be intensifying our efforts to ensure all staff receive appropriate training".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Residents lose legal challenge against library closures in Brent

The Court of Appeal have rejected a legal challenge by residents in Brent to a proposal by  the Labour-run Council to close six libraries. I'm not sure what the campaigners next move will be. Their website urges supporters to email the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and :

...ask him to use his statutory powers to investigate, intervene and order a public inquiry.

Pure localists might argue that councils should not have to provide libraries. That it should be a democratic decision rather than a legal requirement - if the councillors close the libraries vote them out. This would be taking a localism a bit too far in my opinion. Councils might not have to run the libraries themselves but they should have to ensure that a service is provided. It is also reasonable that the requirement that it should be "comprehensive" should  be maintained. Expecting people in Kensal Rise to trudge off to Wembley does not constitute a comprehensive service.

Lord Justice Pill said:

13 libraries saved in Cambridgeshire

John Bald writes:

Cambridgshire County Council’s new leader, Nick Clarke, kept his promise to listen to public opinion by reducing cuts in Cambridgeshire’s library budget from £3.2m to £1m this year, thus saving 13 libraries from the imminent threat of closure.

This should be a beacon to Conservative authorities across the country – libraries have to take their share of cuts in hard times, but the original proposition was disproportionate, as are library cuts across the country, notably in Labour authorities, which generally consider literacy to be an elitist concept, and are not sympathetic to it. Libraries are essential to civilised life, both for the growing number of children who do not have their own books, and for adults who need their services for study and to help look for work.

Is Brent Council worried volunteers running a library would fail? Or that they would succeed?

Labour-run Brent Council has been causing dismay for closing libraries without allowing volunteers to keep them going.

In a report in the Daily Telegraph, the Council leader Cllr Ann John, says:

“We didn’t turn our faces against a Big Society solution."

But Margaret Bailey, a leader of the Save Kensal Rise Library Campaign says:

“The council is ideologically opposed to communities running public services: they don’t want to be seen to support the Big Society.” What would happen, she argues, if the local community took over the library and ran it better?

Just how serious Brent really was about the Big Society solution can be judged by reading this document they produced which has been analysed by Toby Young.