Future of Suffolk’s Library Service: our response

Rosehill Readers’ Press Release

For Immediate Release: 14th December 2011

Whilst Rosehill Readers are delighted that all branch libraries in Suffolk are remaining open, we remain doubtful over the level of service that they will be able to offer, and wonder if Suffolk County Council appreciate that ‘books and buildings’ do not constitute a library service.

SCC is asking its councillors to support a high risk business model for our library service. The Industrial and Provident Society model has never been used to run a library service before, with SCC admitting that there is a high risk of failure, saying that it will take the service back “in house” if the experiment fails.

In addition, SCC says that library funding is guaranteed for 2 years only. We would like to know what happens after that and wonder whether the County Council is setting up the library service to fail. If SCC wanted it to survive, we think it would be recommending a safer, low risk business model such as the “in house” model.

SCC seems to think that high risk is a good thing. Members of the public think otherwise. We would like to have a library service that is guaranteed for the next 10 -15 years, not a library service that survives for 2 years and then fails with some libraries being brought back “in house” and other libraries being forced to close.

Rosehill Readers will be asking questions at the SCC meeting on 15/12/11 and will continue our campaign for a free, universal and accessible, high quality and professional, publicly owned and managed service for all of Suffolk’s individuals and communities.