SEPTEMBER 2025 |
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| Welcome to our newsletter round up of September’s UK libraries news! |
PUBLIC LIBRARIES NEWS |
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Bad news. Given the dire state of information about libraries, PLN is a precious resource we have always supported and recommended. At www.publiclibrariesnews.com you’ll find the ONLY topical news available. Info from press reports and other sources is updated weekly – and turned into useful compilations in the top bars. Incredibly, this miracle has been performed in his spare time by Ian Anstice, a library manager in Cheshire (above). For nothing. For 15 years. Not so incredibly, he is now stopping. Given that austerity is carrying right on under Labour, he says, “it’s all a bit samey… In short, doing PLN is no longer fun.” We don’t blame him for a moment. But we can’t let this unique resource be lost. The Library Campaign is trying to get together all the library organisations to find a replacement. Frankly, everyone is saying it’s a tragedy to lose PLN – but so far there is little action. Any ideas? Meanwhile check out the site now in case it goes dark for ever. |
175 YEARS ON Happy 175th birthday, Public Libraries Act 1850! This for the first time enabled larger towns to charge a halfpenny rate to set up public libraries – if a local referendum agreed. Cue many hilarious local debates. Solid citizens fought against wasting their rates making the lower classes ruin their health stooping over books. They often won. Others argued: “Does not even sensible selfishness teach that the population of every town in the kingdom would be made safer, as well as better, by such an institution as this?” Find some intriguing facts about the early days on the British Library website. (And take a look at the side column for more, including President Trump’s very first attempt to suppress the truth.)  |
THE ENFIELD EYESORE |
 After our Croydon story in the last issue, maybe we should start a series about Bad Optics. This time it’s Enfield council. Nothing stands up against the obscenity of its shocking closure this year of HALF of its 16 libraries. But, in an amusing footnote, it’s now under furious attack for spending £18,000 on a mural. On the side of the central library. Without getting the required planning permission. |
The mural is colourful and maybe not to everyone’s taste. But it’s being denounced as “horrible”, “hideous”, “unsightly”, and even “deeply unsettling”. There’s a petition against it. The story got the council ridiculed in the national papers. We suspect the anger is not so much about aesthetics as rage at the council’s destruction of its libraries despite strong local opposition. |
CAERPHILLY – MORE UPS AND DOWNS |
Last month we reported on the successful application for Judicial Review by campaigners against Caerphilly Council’s plan to close 10 of its 18 libraries. Almost on the same day as we published that story, the Council announced that it was going ahead despite the pending legal case! The locals, with the support of their lawyers got an interim injunction to prevent the closures and, for now at least, all appear to be open. Apart from updating everyone on the latest, this is a noteworthy story in that it is the first time in our memory that a library authority, faced with a judicial review of a decision to cut services, has attempted to ignore the process of law. Of course they may win the case – or if they lose, try to implement the closures in another way (more legally presumably) but for now it’s on hold. And there is more. There is a Senedd by-election in Caerphilly next month. It has been reported that the Chief Executive has cancelled all council and committee meetings during the election period apparently because one candidate is a Councillor. So presumably there won’t be further public discussion about the libraries for a few weeks.WARWICKSHIRE’S SENSORY MOBILE |
Sensory rooms or areas in Libraries (and football stadia amongst other places) are not new. However Warwickshire Council may have a first in the launch of their new Sensory mobile library. It will undertake all the normal functions of a mobile library but in addition It will be a “fully equipped, accessible, environmentally-friendly electric vehicle, housing a small interactive sensory space for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities.” Being called the Discovery Den, it appears that Warwickshire not finished with it’s development. It is reported that they are looking for input / feedback from young people with special needs, as well as parents/ carers and professionals, about what else they could on and with the vehicle and they kind of equipment to be installed. |
ENGLISH LIBRARIES DATASET |
 image designed by FreepikFor years the library profession and its allies (including The Library Campaign) have been calling for a publicly available dataset enabling comparison of information across all library authorities. The statistics produced by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) are very expensive for any individual or small organisation top urchase and in recent years have had a response rate of c50% which make them less helpful anyhow. Last year the Arts Council England published what it called a Basic Libraries Dataset. It lists every library in the country together with one detail about ownership, recent history etc. it was accurate to 2023. |
Now they have published the ‘English Public Libraries Activity Dataset’. It’s a huge spreadsheet, organised by authority, though a number are not listed so presumably did not reply (or not in time.) It gives details of numbers of physical and digital events as well as the total attendees for each type. Then it lists loans/ issues for each type of stock (physical books, ebooks and audio and audio books), followed by numbers of visitors, and information on such things as home delivery and click and collect services. Many of the categories are also divided to show the number of uses /users in particular age groups. it could all be very useful but it is incredibly cumbersome to use. Most of the categories are broken down by month with no annualised column and you may have to scroll across a lot to columns to find the detail you may want. As a first go it shows intent but we hope that the next iteration will be more usable. It is accurate as of August this year though the data necessarily relates to 2024/25. And we also hope that both datasets will be updated regularly – we would suggest annually. RUBBISH, GRASS AND LIBRARIES Don’t get too excited… but public libraries get a mention in a new “framework” for measuring councils’ performance. And what gets measured gets taken seriously. The Local Government Outcomes Framework is now being consulted on. It lists 15 outcomes “to deliver key national priorities for local people and communities… part of the wider reform agenda for local government”. Outcomes cover things like adult social care, health and welfare, “every child achieving and thriving”. There are “metrics” to measure each one. Mercifully, these use only data that is already collected by councils. This is probably a major reason why libraries pop up. So here they are under “Neighbourhoods: people feel safe and included in their local community and are satisfied with their local area as a place to live.” General feelings are mostly measured by something called the DCMS Community Life Survey. But there are also three concrete measures – fly tipping, access to green spaces and visits to libraries! Make of it what you wish. |
FACEBOOKROUND UP |
Birmingham’s Save Hall Green Library has taken the time to make sure that people who have been following the reopening of their library are aware that it is due to their group’s efforts, stating in a recent post that: ‘Hall Green Library has been saved and is being refurbished because of the strength of our community campaign — not because of our councillors. Cllr Suleman voted for cuts and closures, refused to support our campaign, and is now claiming credit on Facebook.’ They went on to describe the refurbishment as essential, due not to the local councillor but to the urgency of making a public space safe for library users, and that this was part of what the Save Hall Green campaign has been about. Nearby, the Save Coventry Libraries group have been posting about the event they are holding on Tuesday, October 14th. Led by Lucy Carlton-Walker, Creative Director for Warwickshire Libraries, the event will include dialogue with their colleagues from Solihull and Staffordshire library services about how the new library services will be operating, current priorities of the library, and plans for future projects. The public is encouraged to attend, and they mention that attendees will have a chance to: “understand more about how the Library services operate, what activities they deliver and how to develop and build partnerships between cultural organisations, artists and library services’ Save Our Libraries Essex (SOLE) has been drawing its Facebook followers’ attention to the current government’s proposals for reinvigorating the high street. This is an example of library groups taking up other causes that relate to libraries, as libraries can be thought of in many cases as adding to the general vibrancy of a high street and attracting more people, who are able to come to use physical spaces. On Instagram, we at TLC regularly remind people that libraries are one of the original co-working spaces and that, as we note in this section of the newsletter, they also do far more beyond merely lending out books. Buckinghamshire’s Friends of Gerrards Cross Library has set up a Thursday afternoon clinic that could serve as inspiration for other library groups, whereby, for people who struggle with modern technology, such as iPads and other tablets, mobile phones, and laptops. 30-minute appointments are available. The service can be booked at the front desk in the library. Friends of Chinnor Library, Oxfordshire, were advertising their library’s musical story time session aimed primarily at young ones. They began their post with a joke: ‘What type of music are balloons scared of? Pop music!’ The sessions will run every Saturday morning at 10:30 am. Kirklees’ Friends of Batley Library have again been posting about their Friday crochet mornings, which give locals a chance to catch up and discuss not only tips about crochet but also use the space for sociability. Tea drinking is clearly encouraged at these events! |
| AND FINALLY… |
| RURAL TOURING GUIDE |
Some Friends groups make ingenious use of touring performers and artists to add sparkle to their events. So we welcome a new edition of The Rural Touring Guide”. It’s published by (not surprisingly) something called the National Touring Forum. It hasn’t had a major revamp in about 20 years, and it certainly needs one with our awful financial climate and the joys of devolution to come.A “digital handbook“, it aims to “instil knowledge and confidence in arts professionals through expert advice, insider knowledge, and practical steps to help them bring creative work into spaces such as village halls, libraries, pubs, and schools”.Creative Arts East, which did the rewrite, says: “Rural touring continues to lead the way in transforming how culture is shared – handing decision-making to communities and pioneering new models for the economic sustainability of touring nationwide.” |
| Please get in touch with us if your local library is under threat, you have a Friends group that you wish to promote or you would like advice about how to start a Friends group for your local library – currently under threat or not. Feel free to ask any questions about what Friends groups get up to. We have now created an archive of our previous newsletters, which you can view here – check it out if you haven’t already and share the link as it’s also a place for new subscribers to sign up. If you are new to getting our monthly newsletter this is a way to see what we’ve been getting across since we started this newsletter in Autumn 2022. |
