Community impacts of library cuts
Libraries are more than just books. There’s a whole raft of social and community engagement that goes on there that would devastate communities and their ability to support each other if the hours are cut.
Dartmouth Library’s reduction in hours are proposed to go from 37 to 15, and Buckfastleigh’s hours will fall from 15 to 6.
Library issues
The issue of libraries was raised at the TQ6 Community Partnership meeting, admittedly by a librarian, but it opened the debate for a councillor on the committee deciding what to do with the libraries, another who was on the chair of the health and well-being board, as well as someone who recognised the strategic value to the running of community services and engagement. And someone who found refuge in Devon libraries while on living on the street, and still goes to Dartmouth library now.
It was a fitting venue, regulars at the Dartmouth Chest Community Cafe had tried to respond to the consultation on their phone – it wasn’t an easy process.
Chair of the scrutiny committee
South Hams (Blackawton and Stoke Fleming) and Devon County Councillor (Dartmouth & Marldon) Simon Rake, was at the meeting. We caught up with him after for a quote about the library consultation. He is vice chair of the scrutiny committee, but he chaired the budget scrutiny meeting at which libraries were discussed, and will also be chairing the committee’s special meeting to look at libraries at the end of this month.
“Libraries have evolved to offer so much more than access to books,” said Simon. “From health support, like blood pressure monitors and baby weighing, to internet access and photocopying, baby, toddler and kids groups, a warm space or just a place to meet they provide a broad range of community support.
“The current restructuring of services will seek to work in partnership with our communities to find better ways of delivering all of these exciting new services alongside the more traditional library services.
“There was a huge response to the recent consultation, with well over 20,000 submissions received. No final decisions have been taken pending full analysis and consideration of the consultation responses.”
More pressure on the community
The proposed cuts for Dartmouth and Buckfastleigh libraries are massive, which as well as raising the cost of the average loan, would seem to curtail some of those extra activities, while putting extra strain on the community groups, like Dartmouth Community Chest to step in to provide computer access, for example.
It doesn’t take much to see the activities at Dartmouth Library would be severley hit with a reduction in opening hours.
Tuesdays
Take Tuesdays for instance, from 10-10:30am every Tuesday, they have Bounce & Rhyme, a singing and storytelling session on offer in the library for children 0-5, with an average of eight families per session. And from 10-2 pm every Tuesday parents can weigh their babies in a designated area in the library. “The service was cut at the local clinic, so it’s important that we provide it and families don’t need to travel further afield to other clinics,” the library told us.
Add to that the Blood Pressure Monitor Distribution Service, IT Buddy sessions, craft sessions, printing facilities and internet access, as well as all the book loaning, reading and storytelling activities.
These are just the headlines, not the impact on individuals and the knock on effects of connection and support.
What goes on a Dartmouth library (as well as lending books)
Bounce & Rhyme; Baby Weighing; Blood Pressure Monitor Distribution Service; Audio Book Club; Book Club for Parents of Young Children; Other Book Groups; Home Library Service; IT Buddy sessions; Staff visits to Stoke Fleming Community Primary School Nursery, Humpty Dumpty Childcare/ Partnership with local Preschools; School Assemblies; Secret Book Quest and Summer Reading Challenge; School Workshops; Craft Sessions; Printing Facilities; Internet Access; Digital Library; Access to Online Resources
Libraries are obviously so much more than books. They are places to meet, and it would seem ideally placed within the real of health and well-being.
Part of health and well-being?
Ged Yardy, Dartmouth and East Dart South Hams District Councillor and Chair Devon Health and Wellbeing Board, told us after the meeting: “Libraries are an essential focal point in the fabric of our towns and villages, where users can build knowledge, find solutions, make friends, socialise, and help themselves and others to positively benefit themselves and our broader community.
“Improving mental health is an important part of the Devon Health and Well-being strategy and as such Libraries have an important role in our communities and cutting library hours does not seem to be a step in the right direction.”
The last public sector service
Buckfastleigh Library is the last public sector service In Buckfastleigh, says Pam Barrett of Buckfasleigh’s Better Places. At the moment the library is open Monday and Tuesday mornings. It’s closed on Wednesday, it opens Thursday and Friday afternoon, and then on Saturday morning again. That 15 hour hockey cokey is planned to reduce by more than half to 6 hours a week.
“It’s really well used. What shocked us here was the banding,” said Pam. The branding was used during the consultation to identify library usage, based on book borrowing. And although Buckfastleigh Library’s is high, it was placed in a low use banding.
And that use of banding didn’t seem in keeping with a consultation that is said to be about change of use rather than book borrowing.
The reality of the library
The reality of the library in Buckfastleigh is that it’s the last warm space in the centre of the town in a building that people find accessible.
“I’d say lending books is about the 50% of its purpose here. The rest of it is about the social connectedness, the communication, the dealing with loneliness and isolation. It’s broadband. It’s signposting. It’s often the place where people will go to look for support with filling out benefit forms or online access, or for computers after school,” said Pam.
Essential social connectivity services
It’s those essential social connectivity services that are completely missing in a community like Buckfastleigh for the population that needs it the most. Somewhere like Buckfastleigh is really divided, and becoming more so.
“It’s the richer communities that are better able to run book clubs and book borrowing services and bookshops. We have no bookshops in Buckfastleigh.”
If you’re looking to create library hubs, you should build them in places like Buckfastleigh, said Pam.
“We’ve got estates with very little services in them, trying to run on a voluntary basis, not only the library service, but the ambition of the library service to provide signposting and welfare and baby weighing and blood testing. We’re already running here everything ourselves because of local authority, both at district and county and government have withdrawn from the place.”
In Dartington, Mark shared his experience of Devon libraries.
Clean, warm and safe
“When I was on the street, it was a warm space. It was somewhere I could go and read.
“It was also somewhere where I could get clean, because they had toilet facilities with washing facilities in them. It was a haven, and you’d be sat outside at half-past eight, quarter to nine, waiting for the library in Newton Abbot to open.
“You could get online if you wanted to – I didn’t have a phone that I could get online on the streets. A lot of people on the streets do, but I didn’t. And also, it’s just somewhere calm and reasonably safe.”
Mark visited Newton Abbot library when he was on the streets. And in Dartmouth the library is a focus when the Dartmouth Community Café isn’t open.
“A mental health worker suggested I join the library, and I did,” he says. “The days that I’m not in the cafe, I can go there instead of sitting in the market or outside of the toilet. It’s the only shelter. It’s a place where you can be warm, and you feel reasonably safe, and sit and read.”
The potential impact of the changes worry him.
“The big libraries, Newton Abbot and Torquay, Exeter, they’re well catered for. But the amount of cuts that are going to be done here in Dartmouth, and in the outlying libraries, the service is just going to be crucified, whichever way you look at it.”
When the issue was debated at Dartmouth Town Council, Mark was there.
It makes a difference
“I did go to the council meeting where the library was debated before the consultation period. I filled out the form online at the library with some of my views. But you don’t know what their remit is.
“I’ve stood up twice in the council meetings. Once I got heard, the second time I didn’t. And it makes a difference. It makes a difference to me.
“The whole council was agreed that they should send a strongly worded letter.”
Library contract
Libraries Unlimited is contracted by Devon County Council to deliver public library services at 50 libraries in Devon. They also receive some funding from other teams within Devon County Council, for example from Public Health, for specific projects such as lending blood pressure monitors.
As the local authority, Devon County Council defines the statutory public library service which it commissions Libraries Unlimited to deliver. Libraries Unlimited enhances the statutory offer with a huge range of additional services and offers, many of which are delivered in partnership with multiple organisations.
We’ve asked Devon County Council about the banding and its consultation. We’ve yet to hear back from them.
The results of the consultation are due in spring.
