Three quarters of respondents to Harrow library survey oppose closing libraries

Harrow’s rundown library service has held up its visitor numbers despite national trend

Three quarters of respondents to library survey oppose closing libraries

Harrow libraries need to invest not divest

Harrow Council has determined that as part of it’s current saving strategy, the library service will have to bear £500,000 of the cost with a 25% cut in funding. This a political decision which reflects Harrow’s historical lack of investment in cultural infrastructure and a progression of the corresponding decline in commitment to its statutory obligation to provide an effective library service.

Libraries have been treated as a Cinderella service.

Despite the service’s under-funding and neglect, it remains much valued by the community, and council has met with stout opposition to its ambitions to instigate further library closures, just as it met with vociferous opposition to its desire to close the Harrow Museum and the Hatch End Arts Centre.  

The simplest way of achieving the sought £500,000 savings from the library service is to cut off a few limbs from the service and deny easy access to sectors of the community. This is what is proposed with the closure of four of Harrow’s remaining ten public libraries.

Libraries are essential aspects of the cultural and social infrastructure for a community. Well-managed libraries contribute to the vitality of a neighbourhood, providing centres of information, learning, leisure, and stimulation. They also help with integration when they are promoted as destinations for all groups within the community.

The Law (The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964) states [extracts]:

Section 7: General duty of library authorities.

(1) It shall be the duty of every library authority to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof,

(2) In fulfilling its duty under the preceding subsection, a library authority shall in particular have regard to the desirability—

(a) of securing, by the keeping of adequate stocks, by arrangements with other library authorities, and by any other appropriate means, that facilities are available for the borrowing of, or reference to, books and other printed matter, and pictures, gramophone records, films and other materials, sufficient in number, range and quality to meet the general requirements and any special requirements both of adults and children; and

(b) of encouraging both adults and children to make full use of the library service,

The intentions of the now 50-year-old Law are clear: to make the broadest range of materials available to the widest range of interests (people). The principle duty it imposes is the provision of a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof.  This is incompatible with the closure of libraries.

Also clear is that Harrow has failed miserably in its task of encouraging both adults and children to make full use of the library service.

Rather than promote them with pride, Harrow has neglected them as if unwanted. Rather than exploit their potential as social enhancers, Harrow has treated them as an irritating statutory obligation to be complied with, without enthusiasm, at the most basic level allowable.

Through its rolling programme of service reduction, which has seen the axing of the reference library and the closure of the core Civic Centre library, the making redundant of the bulk of the borough’s librarians, the re-staffing of libraries with a complement of incompetent and poorly trained, less well paid staff, its lack of investment in buildings and IT infrastructure, its low stock levels, and its poor opening hours, it has actively discouraged users, possibly so as to be able to say that user numbers have gone down and to justify further closures on this basis.

Blaming users for a lack of enthusiasm for poor service does not work.

Ironically, while the decline in service has undoubtedly discouraged users, and driven many away, user numbers are still rising in Harrow’s libraries and the case for closures due to lessening of use cannot be made.

The overall increase in visits to Harrow libraries from year 2013/14 to 2014/15 is 14%.

 Visits to all Harrow Libraries – 2011-12 to 2014-15

2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15 (April to Nov 2014)	2014-15 (annualised projection)	% change 2012/13-2014/15
1,094,598	1,092,538 (- 0.19%)	1,104,846 (+ 1%)	(734,647)	1,259,394	+ 14%

Two of the libraries it proposes to close are outperforming this figure: Bob Lawrence 20%, and Rayners Lane 14.4% (all figures derived from Appendix 4, Visits by Library– 2011-12 to 2014-15, the latter annualised based on the available data for the months May – November 2014).

Visits to Libraries proposed to close due to falling visits – 2011-12 to 2014-15

Branch	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15 (April to Nov 2014)	2014-15 (annualised projection)	% change 2012/13-2014/15
Bob Lawrence	64247	64269 (+0.3%)	65445 (+ 1.83%)	45809	78,529	+ 20%
Hatch End	81834	84089 (+ 2.76%)	85334 (+ 1.48%)	53090	91011	+ 6.7%
North Harrow	72041	72773 (+ 1.02%)	77563 (+ 6.58%)	47143	80,816	+ 4.2%
Rayners Lane	82533	82025 (- 0.62%)	74506 (- 9.17%)	49724	85241	+ 14.4%

These figures from council do not correlate with the council’s statement that numbers of visits are falling. They do however correspond with a key outcome from the library service consultation undertaken from November 2014 to January 2015 “to inform the development of the library strategy”, in which nearly three quarters of respondents (71.5%) opposed the proposed closure of the four libraries under threat.

While the council’s proposal additionally makes the case for library closures based on a decline in book issues, and suggests that changing patterns of behaviour mean more use of digital media and online resources, it fails to acknowledge that the changing patterns of usage have seen an increase, not a decrease, in the demand for access to libraries themselves.

The council’s desire to increasingly convert its statutory library provision into an on-line resource is neither matched by a quality provision to make this a reality, nor by the level of actual use by its members. Crucially, it does nothing to mitigate the demand for the bricks and mortar resource provided by library buildings, which remain highly valued, well used, and have the potential to be more widely used as community cultural focal points.

Harrow libraries have made no attempt to respond to the changing population pattern of the borough. Inward migration and an increase in the proportion of rented properties mean that a significant sector of the community has not grown up with libraries and needs to be introduced to their offering.

The unloved, uncared for appearance of Harrow’s libraries discourages new visitors, who might reasonably expect to find a more modern and welcoming environment, in keeping with their experience of office and retail environments.

The reduction in the level of stock issues is a natural reflection of the out of date existing stock and the poor selection and promotion of new stock. Here too, lack of commitment to more than the basics is the cause. Harrow’s current spend (£323,000) does not compare favourably with neighbouring Brent (£550,000).

The reduction in the level of stock issues certainly does not detract from the apparent need for libraries. More visits are being made to Harrow’s libraries year on year and the need to improve, extend, and develop the service is indicated. The opposite of what Harrow proposes.

Traditionally, one of the key areas of attraction to library visitors is the newspapers, magazines and journals section, which can act as a focal point in a properly organised library. Here again, underinvestment and an apparent disinterest by the service providers is shown in the poor choice, unappealing displaying and lack of availability of titles, and the complete divestment of archiving facilities denying access to past issues and the wasting a valuable resource.

The service even fails to keep abreast of the renewals for the subscriptions it has, titles are not in the catalogue, staff are unfamiliar with the titles (the more so with the online titles), and there is a general air of disinterest in the section. This is also reflected in the uninviting reading areas themselves that show no imagination and little attention to comfort.

Overall, Harrow’s libraries appear designed to discourage rather than encourage visitors to linger. The average doctor’s waiting room has more appeal. While in other sectors there is constant talk about improving the “customer experience” through enhancement, Harrow’s libraries tend more towards the grubby than the glamorous.

Libraries are not and cannot become profit centres. They are cultural centres provided for community enhancement and the public good. This is a social benefit that comes at a financial price, but it is acknowledged to be a socio-economic net gain.  

Harrow’s intention to close four more of its libraries is based purely on cost grounds. It pays no regard to the social benefit they offer and fails to consider how they could offer more with appropriate investment and imagination.

At the same time, there are obvious inefficiencies in the service, which could easily achieve the £500,000 saving without the need to close any library.

Poor management has caused gross inefficiencies.

If delivery costs per visitor were driven down to the mean average (£1.48) of Harrow’s 5 lower cost libraries (Roxeth, Wealdstone, Pinner, Hatch End, Kenton) a total of £459,158

in savings could be realised. Just £41k short of the £500,000 target.

If all Harrow’s libraries could deliver visits at the same efficiency as Roxeth (£1.27 per visit) a total of £650,734 in savings could be realised, achieving £150,734 in surplus savings which could be released for improvements to the service.

More than a third of this could be achieved from Gayton alone, which, while having the benefit of a town centre location and the highest visitor numbers, is conspicuously not cost effective.

With more than double the mean average of visitors across the borough’s 10 libraries, Gayton could be expected to at least be among the lowest cost per visitor locations. Instead it is second highest, only beaten to the top spot of most costly by the library with the lowest visitor numbers of them all. Bob Lawrence with its 65,445 would obviously not have the economies of scale to match Gayton’s 238,134 visitors. Neither does Roxeth with its 122,809 visits, yet Roxeth delivers visits at a cost of only £1.27 while Gayton cannot deliver the same service for less than £2.25.

If Gayton were performing to the same level as Roxeth, £233,371 could be saved at this branch alone.

What leaps out from this analysis is that Gayton is a very expensive liability and the prime candidate for closure. The most expensive, unfriendly and unloved of Harrow’s libraries, in a wholly unsuitable building, in a poor location, could generate £35,737 more than the required £500,000 saving, just by closing. 

(figures derived from Harrow Council’s report for Cabinet meeting 19^th March 2015: Library Strategy 2015-2018)

What Harrow libraries lack is a strategic vision to match the evident need.

The current plan is cut the number of libraries, starting with four in April/May 2015.

A new central library is spoken of (it has been talked about for years). Even if planning started today, it could not be delivered until 2018. Meantime, the plan is to close libraries today.

A new central library, while required as a replacement for the unsuitable Gayton library building, would add nothing to the size of the library estate, and would not compensate for the lack of access to a neighbourhood library.

The availability of a bus service and a half hour journey is no alternative to a local library and is only going to further discourage users from attending a library. Eventually the same reasoning could be applied to all outlying libraries and the whole borough could be served from one major library at the centre. Alternatively, library users could all be provided with a smart phone and Harrow could call that a library service for the 21^st century.

Having reduced library opening hours, and made no effort to promote the libraries to its changing population, it is hardly surprising that keeping the visitor numbers up has become challenging for library staff. 

Neighbouring Hillingdon has extended library opening hours, invested in all of its 17 library buildings and the resources they offer, and seen visit numbers rise by 33% and the membership increase by 14%.

                                                                      (source: http://www.hillingdon.gov.uk)

Meanwhile, Harrow plans closures and is considering further reduction in opening hours, offset by the introduction of new technology to enable unmanned opening.

The £20,000+ required for the implementation of the “Open+” scheme at each library does not account for on-costs such as maintenance, licence fees, increased risk (losses and damage), heating and ventilation, or the fact that even if unstaffed, premises would presumably need to be checked and secured by someone each day. 

The only public library trial of the Danish system in the UK has been at a tiny Leeds CC branch library that only opens 4 days a week. The trial is ongoing and has not yet been fully evaluated.

The system has been in use in Denmark, again at small branch libraries in small communities. Places where there is a strong community spirit and a sense of common ownership of public resources. Even here, implementation has only been recent, over the past two years, and the novelty has yet to wear off. Significantly, the buildings themselves are new, attractive, well equipped and clean – factors which (in other countries, at least) tend to discourage the abuse of a facility.

By contrast, Harrow is a mostly urban borough not known for an idyllic rural lifestyle.

Both in Leeds and in Denmark, the system has been implemented as a means of extending convenience and improving access for users, not as a cost cutting measure. There has been no reduction of manned opening hours and none are planned.

While the system might lend itself to extending the hours of a small branch in a quiet area, such as North Harrow, which also has the physical configuration that lends itself to its implementation, Harrow intends to trial the system at its second busiest branch, Wealdstone, in a location known to attract loitering youths, anti-social behaviour and theft. This is the branch where a new flatbed scanner was stolen before it was even plugged in. Even if unmanned opening does not put the library itself at risk, it is not likely to encourage uptake among legitimate visitors familiar with the location’s reputation.

In any case, the trial in Wealdstone has not yet been implemented and cannot inform this budget review. So the likes of North Harrow and Hatch End, where one could see the system may have potential, will already be lost to the borough before it can be considered.

In conclusion.

Despite long-term underinvestment, several staffing and outsourcing re-arrangements, reduced opening hours and poor IT services (including a very poor online catalogue and reservation system), Harrow library visit numbers have remained remarkably solid in recent years.

This demonstrates a stoic adherence of the existing user base to a service it values but its provider apparently does not. This is likely to deteriorate as the numbers atrophy through natural causes.

If Harrow is prepared to fulfil its duty to its residents and comply with the intent of the Law, it needs to refresh, renew and expand its library offering with bold and insightful initiatives.

The present proposals are a retreat from its cultural obligation to the community. 

Help Needed (Desperately) To Shape The Harrow Of The Future

Harrow Council’s eight week Take Part consultation on the first round of proposed cuts started, ran and ended without any specific information about the proposed cuts.

As a vehicle for reasoned consideration, the Take Part Budget Consultation Questionnaire was a travesty. It listed options that are likely to be divisive, offered them in a confusing negative form, and asked them twice, as if respondents would volunteer that the community is likely to be of a different opinion to themselves.

The perversely constructed questionnaire is likely to have defeated any sensible respondent for other reasons too. There was no information available about the various options. We have no idea what the cost of the individual services are, what the scale of each of the proposed cuts is, how much saving each will create (if any), or what the trade-offs would be. In most cases it’s “reduce” “close some” or “cut some”.

How much? How many? Which ones? How could anybody say how much impact it would have without knowing the answers to these fundamental questions?

Council has a duty to ensure that any cuts to services are made fairly and equitably, and for this they need to be considered in the round.

It is pretty obvious that a number of the proposed cuts will only effect those that use those services, starting with the proposed closure of the Emergency Relief  Scheme, a service provided only to the most desperate and one hopefully not needed by most residents. Does this mean that because most respondents will therefore not answer that closure of the scheme would impact on their family, that they would be happy for Council to close the scheme to families in dire need? 

On the other hand, cutting the number of senior managers is unlikely to be an option selected as having the most impact on respondents either, but (a) they wouldn’t know, and (b) the Council is increasing the number anyway with its recent high profile appointment. In any case, it’s not about numbers. It’s about effectiveness. The question is really, are they doing their job well? Based on these proposals and this questionnaire they patently are not.

Council department heads have been working on generating the ideas for these proposed cuts since early this year, and this is as far as they have gotten. There was no further information available to respondents to the questionnaire because there is no such information. None of these ideas have been outlined, never mind detailed. They are just off-the-cuff suggestions.

There are no costings, no projected savings, no methodologies, no time scales, for any of the “proposed cuts”. These will be worked out, sources tell us, once Cabinet has made a decision about which ones to pursue. Based on what? Based on the information that will be worked up once the decision has been made. One can sense the presence of genius.

We don’t even know how much money this first round of proposed cuts is supposed to save. In the absence of a target, we will never know if it has been met. If we assume that a figure of £20 million would not be too wrong (£75 million has to found over 4 years), some radical thinking, not evident in these proposals, is likely to be needed.

How much does Council hold as its capital reserve, and should this be the time to consider drawing it down?  At this time of historically low interest rates, should Council not be securing borrowing at fixed rates to provide funding for income-generating projects that would increase its revenue streams in coming years?

The second question of the budget consultation survey is revealing. “How much, if at all, do you now feel that you personally know about why the Council is proposing to make cuts of £75 million in the next 4 years?”. The answer of course is nothing, as is anticipated in the question. The question, however, should have been how much do you now know about the cuts proposed in this questionnaire?  Lamentably, the answer would again be nothing.

Instead of running costly and pointless consultations like the Take Part cuts questionnaire, with its questions posed in an information vacuum, Council should be mounting a campaign and a legal challenge to get the funding formula reviewed and for Harrow to get a more appropriate settlement from central Government.

Could do better.

Some service requirements will have changed over the years and imbalances of provisioning should have been regularly adjusted as a normal part of progress. Proper analysis of how services are used requires a little more effort from departmental heads than the generation of a few vague ideas at a time of crisis. A proper impact study provides a proper basis for decision making. Anything less is cavalier and irresponsible.

Out of continuous revision comes the confident knowledge that services are meeting needs and delivery is matching requirements. Instead, what we are presented with in the Take Part project is the sight of a floundering Council, desperate for ideas, having left its decisions far to late to give them due consideration, and which will inevitably make knee-jerk responses that could lead to catastrophic mistakes that save little or no money. 

What’s needed is proper, balanced, fact led analysis, and a sensible unhurried debate. Not a fatuous and flimsy charade of a public consultation which can only be ignored because it cannot produce anything of use.

The survey ended on November 8^th and a summary of responses will be presented to cabinet on 11^th December. Details will then be produced to explain the decisions Council proposes to go ahead with, ostensibly, to enable further consultations to take place.

This new information will need to be considered by taxpayers at a time when their thoughts are likely to be focused on Christmas and little else. It should have been being scrutinised over the months of spring, summer and autumn, but Council officers failed to produce it. Instead, it is proposed that this vital and weighty decision making will all be squeezed into the last days of December, and the dark days of January.

Council has to make its decisions for the budget by February 2015. It will be the last minute rushed result that has been a year in the planning.

It’s not too late to start behaving responsibly and rationally, although that may mean putting off some of these proposed cuts until they can be properly justified and weighed in the balance.

Done properly, this could be an opportunity to refine and improve services, instead of a slash and burn exercise.

Harrow Council reveals 22 parks that are to disappear

Ha Ha Harrow has now received a clarification of its Freedom of Information request to Harrow Council about the 22 “wilderness parks” that will soon be “no more”.

Back in October, Susan Hall revealed one of her primary drivers for wresting control of the Council from the split Labour group.

It’s no secret, she told the Harrow Times on its front page, (issue: 10.10.13), that residents are fed up with parks “so overgrown they might be a delight to adventurer Bear Grylls but no one else”.

Miss Hall and Harrow Council have repeatedly restated the message: “no more wilderness parks”.

Ha Ha Harrow has now received a list of these parks.

None, it seems, are actually parks.  

The “parks” the Council has become concerned about, under the leadership of Conservative councillor Hall, are open spaces that have offered patches of urban countryside in our crowded community, for generations.

These rare opportunities for children to play and exercise their imaginations, and adults to wander and allow themselves to think they are further from town than they really are, will be culled because Miss Hall claims her mailbox is full of complaints about them.

Second on the list of 22 under threat is featured in the Harrow Observer’s Picture of the Week this week. It is Churchfields, Harrow-on-the-Hill, which is photographed “capturing the wonderful contrast of light and shade” of the area.

Harrow’s rampant reorganiser, Councillor Hall, has other ideas of what is beautiful and worth preserving. Fortunately for the residents of north London and south London, similar landscapes, such as Hampstead Heath and Wimbledon Common have survived for hundreds of years.

Whether Harrow’s nature spots will vanish completely or be reconfigured as allotments or housing, or simply be groomed to a state of  artificial “prettiness” is impossible to know from Harrow Council’s policy statements.

Harrow’s parks are in three categories. The Open Spaces are the ones it says are referred in its policy of “no more wilderness parks”. For those concerned, here is the list of the areas that will be lost.

Key Parks	Parkland	Open Spaces
Centenary Park	Alexandra Park	Brockhurst Corner
Harrow Rec	Bernays Grds	Churchfields
Headstone Manor	Byron Rec	Croft
Lowlands Rec	Harrow Weald Rec	Elms Road O.S.
Pinner Memorial Park	Hatch End P.F.	Greenway
Roxeth Rec	Hooking Green	Grove Fields
Cannons Park	John Rumney	Kenton Rec
	Cedars O.S.	Lake Grove
	Chandos Rec	Little Common Pinner
	Melbourne Ave	Little Common Stanmore
	Montesoles P.F.	Lynwood Close O.S.
	Priestmead Rec	Newton Park East
	Queensbury Rec	Newton Park West
	Rayners Mead	Pinner Rec
	Roxbourne Park	Pinner Village Grds
	Shaftesbury P.F.	Ridgeway P.F.
	Stanmore Marsh	River Pinn O.S.
	Stanmore Rec	Streamside
	Weald Village	Whitchurch P,.F.
	West Harrow Rec	Whitefriars O.S.
		Woodlands
		Yeading Walk

Harrow Park Visitors Lost in Wilderness

Half of Harrow’s parks are so overgrown and neglected that Harrow Council has declared them a wilderness.

Answering a Freedom of Information request from HaHa Harrow, Harrow Council has revealed that of the 49 open spaces designated as parks in the borough, 22 need serious attention under its “no more wilderness parks” campaign.

These are the parks the new Council leader, Miss Susan Hall, told the Harrow Times were “so overgrown they might be a delight to adventurer Bear Grylls but no one else”.

Although the campaign to combat the undergrowth repeatedly gets central billing in Harrow Council publicity material, we haven’t yet found any of the 22 parks Miss Hall declared were “no secret” and the source of many complaints from her constituents.

Since they are “no secret” and represent nearly 50% of all parks, they should not be hard to find. Every other park in Harrow must be one of the impenetrable ones.

Dealing with the “wilderness parks” is a big issue for the new administration, becoming its first major project at the insistence of Miss Hall and diverting money away from a fund designed to help vulnerable residents cope with the transition to the latest restrictions on benefits payments. Miss Hall’s Conservative administration has decided that rehabilitating “wilderness parks” is a greater social priority.

Our FoI request, made over a month ago, asked the Council which of the parks had been designated wilderness. We are still waiting to find out.