THE latest chapter into the saga of Liverpool’s closure-threatened branch libraries will be played out tonight (Wednesday, Sept 10) at a crucial meeting of the city’s culture select committee.
The council wants to shut the book on up to 11 of the 18 libraries as part of a massive cost-cutting exercise. The current proposals, as revealed by Liverpool Confidential, would result in no libraries whatsoever in North Liverpool.
A mixture of community groups, housing associations and other organisations has already come forward, offering to rescue and run some of the threatened facilities.
The meeting, starting at 5pm at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to be dominated by the future of the service.
Being presented at the meeting today is a report detailing the running costs of every individual branch library in the city.
From the most expensive to run (Childwall at £305,000 in the past year) - to the cheapest (Lee Valley at £146,666), the chart reveals the wages bill, rents, and other costings for each library.
It points to a multi-million pound cost to the cash-strapped council every year, with the budget slashed year-by-year into the future.
The problem for the city is that there is no legal obligation to run city-wide network of branch libraries at all, to comply with what the Government lays down, and Mayor Anderson has already warned Government grants in the coming years will not even cover the costs of services the city legally has to provide. In other words, something has to give, and the protected services take priority.
That will not convince the official opposition Green Party, and others who are expected to plead for the library service to be spared. Liverpool’s Green Party leader, Cllr John Coyne, will be calling on the culture committee to explore all options to redirect funding into front line library services. He wants the committee, all 90 ward councillors and Mayor Anderson to agree to dedicate money from the Mayoral Neighbourhood Fund and the Leader's Fund over the current and the following two years to save library services.
Mayor Anderson has already stated that the £1.7m of the Neighbourhood Fund was for local schemes for the community, and the proposal would not be feasible, and in any event the fund was not available year on year.
Annual running costs of each library
