Public libraries in ‘crisis’ as councils cut services

In some parts of the UK volunteers have stepped in to save their local libraries since 2016.

In 2018, about 9,000 people in East Sussex signed a petition to stop the county council from shutting seven of its venues – a move it said would save £653,000 a year. The proposals were approved later that year.

But in the village of Ringmer near Lewes, volunteers pulled together to keep the service going.

Wini Buckwell, 17, campaigned to save the library in 2019.

“It was like that space was just being torn out of the community,” they said.

“It was awful, really. My mum and I, well, my whole family really got in on the whole, save the library scheme and campaigning to get them to not shut it. Unfortunately, it did get cut off from the national funding.”

They enjoyed summer reading programmes there when they were younger and used to go there every week after school.

In 2021, the A-level student volunteered with the library. They donated some of their own books and helped to reshelve it.

Now Ringmer Village Library operates a book lending service four days a week, partly using the remaining stock from East Sussex Council.

It has increased its opening hours since being council operated, is a warm space during winter and runs a number of community clubs – all with a team of around 45 volunteers.

But Alex Kittow, chief executive of Libraries Unlimited, which runs 54 libraries on behalf of the council across Devon and Torbay, said some community groups have struggled to keep a similar level of service going without taxpayer funding.

“In the cost of living crisis people have to work longer and are not able to volunteer,” he said.

“There are concerns about volunteers who aren’t part of a network and the danger is we have more telephone boxes with books in that are run down; that have donations of books that people don’t want to read, that are poor quality and it’s not a curated collection.”

Although upper-tier local councils such as county councils and unitary authorities have a statutory duty to provide a “comprehensive library service”, the definition of this has changed in recent years, according to Louis Coiffait-Gunn, the chief executive of the library and information service, CILIP.

“The public have a statutory right to a public library service that’s efficient and comprehensive,” she said.

“Now the way that previous ministers have interpreted that in recent years means we’ve seen a decline in the service, a decline in funding.”