Upper Norwood Library Campaign:
working to protect our unique standalone library
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Monday 11th June, 6.30pm, at the library: Upper Norwood Library Joint Committee AGM - the management comprising local councillors from both Croydon and Lambeth.
Please be there if you can, to show your strength of feeling and help us support the fight for our library. The Upper Norwood Library Campaign, along with the Crystal Palace Community Association who have pledged their support and expertise, continue to fight for fair and proper funding, by attending meetings, lobbying and keeping our library's plight in the public eye.
May 15th 2007: Croydon offers £10,000, with strings attached, and takes away £22,400!
At a very well-attended meeting, Croydon council produced a last-minute document. On offer, instead of the £30,000 p.a. originally promised, was £10,000 for this year, £20,000 for next and £30,000 for the following year.
Without reference to the Joint Committee, Croydon Council took it upon themselves to carry out a so-called 'independent' review of the efficiency and performance of the UNJL. The report appears to be misleading and inaccurate, and clearly seeks to present the library in a poor light by making false cost comparisons between UNJL and selected parts of the Croydon library service.
However, tucked away in the budget figures, Croydon had also taken £22,400 from the library's reserves to pay for an outstanding sum from the renovation works completed during 2003/2004. With the possibility of redundancies looming, the library will actually be £12,000 worse off this year.
Malcolm Wicks, MP for Croydon North, visited and signed the petition.
Thankyou to those who attended the Croydon Council meeting: 2007/08 Council Tax and Revenue Budget, Monday 26th February, 6.30pm, Croydon Town Hall. Councillors noted our presence in the public gallery, and our posters highlighting the plight of the library.
Press Coverage - Croydon Advertiser letters, 20.4.07. Croydon Advertiser letters, 13.4.07. Croydon Advertiser letters, 6.4.07, Croydon Advertiser letters, 29.3.07, Croydon Advertiser letter, 15.3.07, Croydon Advertiser letters, 12.3.07 - and another letter with the same date. The Post (Crystal Palace), 8.3.07, full front page with photo of Tessa Jowell and campaigners. The Post (Croydon), 7.3.07, Tessa Jowell story & photo p.5. The Post (Crystal Palace), 8.2.07, full front page, continued on p4. The Guardian (Streatham, West Norwood, Crystal Palace), 8.2.07, front page photo and p2. The Guardian (Croydon), 7.2.07, p2, and letter, p21. The Guardian (Streatham, West Norwood, Crystal Palace), 1.2.07, p4. The Palace magazine, January 2007, full page, p20. The Guardian (Croydon), 24.1.07, p10. South London Press, 19.1.07. The Post (Crystal Palace), 18.1.07, front page lead story. The Post (Croydon Borough), 27.12.06, full front page. The Post (Streatham, Wimbledon & Crystal Palace), 28.12.06, p8. The Guardian (Streatham, West Norwood & Crystal Palace), 28.12.06, full front page & page 3. South London Press, 22.12.06, p23. Croydon Advertiser, 22.12.06, p4 - none of these available online.
Croydon Guardian, 19.12.06 * Croydon Advertiser, 14.12.06
We start 2007 on a determined note, following positive press coverage of the massive groundswell of popular support for our cause. The combined circulation of the papers above means that tens of thousands of people are aware of Upper Norwood Library's funding crisis.
Four written questions tabled at Croydon Council meeting, 22nd January 2007. Demonstrators with banners observed from public gallery.
Well-attended demo outside Upper Norwood Library on Tuesday 19th December 2006.
Supportive letter from Tessa Jowell MP & Malcolm Wicks MP (acrobat format or .jpg format)
Supportive letter from Valerie Shawcross, London Assembly Member
List of people to write to and express your concerns over the possible closure of the Library as a consequence of inadequate funding: please download contact details in either Acrobat or Word format.
UNJL REVENUE BUDGET
2006-8:
CROYDON RENEGES WITH A DOUBLE WHAMMY UNDERHAND CUTBACK
Link to Croydon's 2005-2009 Library Strategy document. Check p56: "The Council is committed to: Contributing an additional £30,000 per year to the maintenance of UNJL."
Link to Croydon's Public Notice of Key Decisions made at the Cabinet Meeting on 7 February 2005, showing when the 2005-2009 Library Strategy was agreed.
It came as a shock to learn that Croydon Council have decided not to provide the £30,000 supplement to the core funding in the forthcoming 2007/08 year, but neither would they give the outstanding £30,000 for the previous year 2006/07. By this, UNJL ends up £60,000 in deficit, which equates to a 14% reduction in the planned budget for the previous and forthcoming years, and will again be obliged to draw on its reserves to make up the shortfall, and in order to cope with this level of deficiency will almost deplete its reserves.
This bodes ill for the future existence of the Library.
The particular financial difficulties is an entrenched problem – a lower level of revenue funding than provided for other library authorities and a lack of effective investment going back to the early 1960s. The consequences will be reductions in a wide range of core services offered by the Library.
We understand, though, that Andrew Pelling MP will not allow the Croydon officers' recommendations to cut UNJL funding. We demand that all of the outstanding monies that rightfully and vitally belong to the Library be recovered.
THE CAMPAIGN IS NOW RESOLVED TO ACT TO BRING THIS WHOLE MATTER OF UNFAIR AND UNBALANCED FUNDING TO THE FORE SO THAT THE FAIR NEEDS OF UNJL ARE SECURED.
UPPER NORWOOD LIBRARY REALLY DOES FACE AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Despite the recent £1.2 million refurbishment, confusion and uncertainty over cross-borough commitment to funding continues to plague the future of our popular Upper Norwood Joint Library. The situation has reached crisis point with a bleak and ominous future looming on the horizon demanding immediate attention if we are not to lose this rare and valuable community resource.
Double standards and frozen funding
UNJL is reliant on joint funding by Croydon and Lambeth under an agreement that specifies equal funding from both councils each year. But inconsistencies between the financial support given to UNJL by Croydon and Lambeth began in 1984/5 and have continued ever since. In recent years Lambeth has made increased efforts to meet its financial obligations to the library, although even their funding falls short of what is required.
Croydon's funding to UNJL in 2005/6 was at the same level as in 1992/3 and they have confirmed no change in 2006/7. The cost of Croydon's own library service in 1992/3 was £4,586,000. In 2006/7 it is £8,012,000 – a staggering rise of 70%! The resulting severe under-funding from both councils for UNJL compares poorly with the funding provided by the boroughs for their own libraries, which generally continue to benefit from inflation-linked funding and capital funding.
A fair deal?
Croydon Council are pressing the government for parity in the grants received by local councils. If Croydon were on an equal footing with Ealing for example, Croydon would receive an extra £40 million per year.
The Upper Norwood Library Campaign is advancing the same argument. In 2006/7 Croydon's library spend per resident is approximately £24 whilst UNJL's is around £12 in total, meaning that residents in Purley, Coulsdon, Norbury, Thornton Heath, Central Croydon etc are enjoying investment in their library services at twice that of Crystal Palace and Upper Norwood residents. This shortfall sees Upper Norwood residents' council tax payments subsidising library services in other parts of the borough.
Broken promises
The previous Croydon administration pledged in their Library Strategy: 2005-2009 that they would “provide an additional £30,000 per annum to UNJL starting in 2005/6”. However the money earmarked for 2005/6 and 2006/7, totalling £60,000, has never been paid and Croydon's commitment has now been withdrawn, compounding the serious deficit under which the library has to operate.
During the past ten years, Croydon has transferred spending on museums, arts and other services to other departments, despite this transfer of responsibilities the Croydon library budget has not been reduced.
The resulting extra money has helped to meet increases in the operating costs for Croydon's own branch libraries but unfairly none has come the way of the Upper Norwood library.
The serious and unfair under-funding pressure put on our local library is not experienced at libraries within the boroughs of Croydon and Lambeth who are not expected to work within the confines of a continually frozen annual budget.
Increased costs
The demand for, and popularity of, the Upper Norwood library was recognised when the much needed, publicly funded refurbishment took place. The end result was a re-launch with great fanfare. Even then, little thought was given to the economic sustainability of the ‘new library' with levels of core revenue funding for this library being the lowest in London since at least the early 1980s.
The new facilities, such as automatic doors, improved lighting and heating of the building, IT provision, public lift and toilets and a host of other improvements, have led to increased servicing and maintenance costs which are not being met by current funding. Other financial pressures include annual inflation affecting every area of the service. This includes salaries, energy costs, insurance, refuse collection, cleaning costs, rates, audit fees, library books, magazines and newspapers, equipment, stationery, telephone expenses and many other increasingly expensive demands. There are additional costs arising from new government initiatives and legal requirements that the library has to meet.
The future?
Despite government guidelines and support for the principle of a local library, it is hard to see how the Upper Norwood library can continue to function in any meaningful way while facing such arbitrarily imposed financial handicaps. Comparing library spending in 2002/3 across all London boroughs, saw Camden spending £40 per head on its library services, Croydon £15.75 and Lambeth £16.27. Upper Norwood comes in lowest with just £9.63.
On this basis our library faces a bleak future with the likelihood of severely reduced levels of staff and services, and possible closure and substitution with a limited mobile library service.
The UNJL with proper financial backing - in line with that offered to library services in Lambeth and Croydon - would be able to expand its services even further rather than being forced to consider redundancies, cuts in opening hours, a freeze on new books, newspapers, magazines, curtailment of activities for children and school class visits, staff training, caretaker cover and other basic elements that provide the ‘core' public library services that every Croydon and Lambeth taxpayer has a right to expect– including those who live in Upper Norwood.
Croydon offer £10K for this year, 15.5.07
Petition presented at Full Croydon Council Meeting, 23.4.07
Campaign Annual General Meeting, speaker: Tim Coates, 20.3.07
Mass protest at library management meeting, 2.2.07
Written questions tabled at Full Croydon Council Meeting, 22.1.07 - photo
Croydon Council Scrutiny Committee, 23.1.07
Demonstration and march, 19th December 2006
Newsletters:
*January 2007
*September 2006