Last month I posted a complete list of London's libraries and blogged about how the number has changed over the last 10 years. You helped me check it so I'm hopeful it's correct. The map below should therefore show the current number of libraries in each London borough. Red is proper council libraries and green is spun-off community libraries.
Hillingdon is London's library champion with 17 libraries, followed by Croydon and Bromley with 14 apiece. Meanwhile Harrow, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea only have six. Enfield does really well if you include community libraries and really badly if you don't.
But there's more to it than just numbers. One reason Hillingdon's number is high is that it's one of the largest boroughs, whereas Kensington & Chelsea has a much smaller area so needs fewer. If you bash the figures Kensington & Chelsea is actually one of the five most generous boroughs by area and Hillingdon's in the bottom five. Bromley and Havering turn out to be the least generous by area with an average of four square miles per library (but of course a lot of their land is undeveloped Green Belt).
Or you could look at population. The City of London comes out on top with one library per 2200 residents, but that's because it has bottomless pockets. Three other boroughs provide one library for fewer than 20,000 people, on average, namely Hillingdon, Richmond and Westminster. Meanwhile the two boroughs with the weakest provision are Tower Hamlets and Harrow, each with more than 40,000 residents per library. Enfield is again either in the best category or the worst depending on whether satellite community libraries count.
Then there's opening hours. South Hornchurch opens two days a week, Cranford four, Palmers Green five, Ickenham six and Pimlico seven. And then there's staffing, and range of books, and IT provision, and learning opportunities, and whether it's a proper library or just a couple of self-service shelves in the corner of a leisure centre. Modern library provision is a multi-faceted thing.
But it's also very much subject to change. Even as the pandemic rages several boroughs are planning to downsize their library services long term. Bexley are in the process of consulting on shutting their libraries for an extra day a week and/or reducing staffed hours. Croydon's councillors are in dire financial straits so have made it known that Broad Green, Bradmore Green, Sanderstead, Shirley and South Norwood libraries may never reopen. And yesterday Tower Hamlets launched a consultation asking residents how many libraries they'd prefer to close.
Sorry, I have this habit of blogging a lot of background information before I finally get round to presenting the actual news at the nugget of my post. Six paragraphs and a map may be a record.
Tower Hamlets' consultation includes a tranche of data revealing how its current seven libraries have been used.
Visits
Loans
Staff
Space
Whitechapel
472,000
105,000
26
3500m²
Chrisp Street
350,000
123,000
14
1100m²
Bow
287,000
106,000
12
1100m²
Canary Wharf
250,000
145,000
11
940m²
Watney Market
290,000
94,000
12
1200m²
Bethnal Green
110,000
56,000
5
400m²
Cubitt Town
45,000
45,000
4
300m²
The first five rows in the table are Idea Stores, Tower Hamlets' pioneering integrated rebrand from the turn of the century, and the last two are your more tradional library. Whitechapel is the flagship, hence the largest number of staff. Numbers of visits and loans are annual totals. You might be able to guess which library is in trouble.
Sorry, I still haven't got round to presenting yesterday's shock news, this is still all background. I'll never make a journalist.
In common with councils across Britain, Tower Hamlets has to make even more cuts to its services over the next few years. The £4.4m which funds the library service annually is therefore in the firing line, with a need to cut the budget by more than a third. Around £600,000 of this is coming from digital innovations, which leaves £1m of physical cuts to be found. The consultation proposes two options.
Finally.
Option 1
• close Cubitt Town library
• reduce opening hours at Bethnal Green from 50 to 15 a week
• reduce opening hours at Watney Market from 65 to 30 a week (and close one floor)
• reduce Sunday opening hours and evening staffing levels at the remaining four sites
Option 2
• close Cubitt Town library
• close Bethnal Green library
• close Watney Market library
• maintain service levels at the remaining four sites
The fundamental choice is whether to close one library or close three libraries. When you only have seven in the first place that's a major cut. Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs closes either way. Bethnal Green and Watney Market either close or significantly downsize. It's very much a case of picking the least worst option.
That said Tower Hamlets would still have a seven-day-a-week library service, which is more than most London boroughs can muster, and the vast majority of the population would be within a mile of a library. Indeed you can see from the maps in the consultation that geographical location is very much behind the intended slimming down.
The consultation mentions that the council has a five year plan to focus on 'four well-placed Idea Stores', which would essentially be the second map with the Docklands location nudged a bit further south to cover more space. It also says that Bethnal Green and Watney Market will be run as satellite sites for Bow and Whitechapel respectively with a reduced service on offer. In other words the council is strategically keen on option 1, long term, and is merely waving option 2 around as scary justification.
This looks and feels like a consultation as window dressing rather than a genuine choice. But if the future really is just four libraries for 325,000 residents, the scythe of austerity really will have struck.
Tower Hamlets, the London borough with the worst library provision per head of population, is considering cutting its libraries to the fewest in any of the 32 boroughs.
That would have been a really strong opener. Put that first next time.
