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Wirral leader slams libraries inquiry

1 December, 2009 | By Mark Smulian

Wirral MBC leader Steve Foulkes has made a furious response to an inspector’s finding that his council breached its statutory duty when it sought to close 11 libraries.

The Local Government Association has weighed into the controversy, calling the law on library duties obsolete.

The proposal for 13 libraries in neighbourhood centres and closure of the remaining 11 generated local controversy and led to culture minister Margaret Hodge setting up an inquiry, carried out by inspector Sue Charteris.

She found Wirral was in breach of its duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service because it “failed to make an assessment of local needs”.

Ms Charteris said Wirral’s policy had been driven by financial considerations rather than those of library users.

But Cllr Foulkes said Ms Charteris’ report was “fundamentally flawed in its logic, and in many places it is just plain wrong”, and that keeping all the libraries open would cost £4.7m over three years.

He said the losers would be “the silent majority who do not use their library, who do not want to see their council tax increase, and who might have used one of the new neighbourhood centres because they were more attractive”.

He believed that the main call on libraries today was “to use computers, not borrow books”, which required the council to install costly technology at each location.

He warned that if Wirral residents continued to reject change the area would “become an impoverished backwater with failing services, crumbling buildings and a mass exit of any investors”.

Cllr Foulkes won support from the Local Government Association, which said the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 was “fit for nothing but the archives” and had not kept pace with the public’s need for wider information services than book lending alone.

Chris White, chair of the LGA’s culture, tourism and sport board, said: “The LGA wants councils to be freed up to make decisions on how best to provide information services to local people without being judged according to laws drawn up half a century ago, before the arrival of the internet and digital media.”