Short debate on plans to publish a new strategy for public libraries, 12 September

• The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales.
• Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils. Our ultimate ambition is to support councils to deliver local solutions to national problems.

• Libraries have a direct contribution to make to three of the Government’s five missions, but this will only be fully realised if there is a strategic and planned approach to embedding them in work across Government departments, opening opportunities for local connections and join up across policies to be made.
  • The co-designed approach to Ambition: Libraries Deliver worked well, as did the extensive sector engagement through Baroness Liz Sanderson’s independent review of libraries. We would highlight both as examples of effective government co-production and design, and any new strategy should take a similar approach. 
• Although libraries are a unique form of cultural infrastructure, and often the last public building in many communities, we believe there is also an opportunity to further enhance their strategic delivery by incorporating their contribution into a wider cultural strategy for England, rather than creating a standalone strategy for libraries.
   

Embedded into local communities, libraries have an important role to play driving recovery through bridging the digital divide, upskilling the workforce, improving educational outcomes and tackling social and digital isolation.

Council’s library services are essential infrastructure, providing access to broadband and digital equipment, job clubs, CV writing support, skills training and targeted support for start-ups through Business and Intellectual Property Centres. These services are invaluable to groups that would otherwise be locked out of the job market and have proven increasingly important in the wake of the pandemic. Data for the weeks immediately following the first lockdown showed that in one library nearly a third of PC users used them for job-seeking.  

Business Property Centres (BPICs) have delivered extraordinary results in supporting entrepreneurs and will be critical in re-establishing a thriving ecosystem of small businesses and freelancers post pandemic. Between 2016 and 2019, BPICs have generated £6.95 for every £1 of public money spent and have supported the creation of 12,288 businesses - 47 percent of which were in the North - and helped businesses create an estimated total of 7843 new FTE jobs. BPICs have also been particularly effective in supporting entrepreneurs from minority groups: of the BPIC service users who went on to start a new business, 55 per cent were women (compared with 22 percent of business owners nationally), 31 per cent were from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background and 17 percent had a disability

Access to libraries contribute greatly to improving children’s educational outcomes and can play an important role in helping pupils’ recover missed learning and addressing the widening attainment gap. Evidence from a British cohort study found that visiting a library regularly and reading contributed four times more to pupils’ educational outcomes than having a parent with a degree. Likewise, 89 per cent of parents reported that the Libraries Summer Reading challenge, which went digital this year, helped their child to engage with reading.

Although libraries are one of the few statutory cultural services, these services have felt a significant impact from spending reductions over the past decade. Upper-tier authorities are spending, on average, around two-thirds of their budget on social care; a trend that has worsened over the last decade. This has squeezed the amount they can spend on all other service areas.

Two-thirds of councils warn that communities will face cutbacks to local neighbourhood services—such as waste collection, road repairs, libraries, and leisure facilities—due to struggles in addressing funding gaps this year. 

The LGA estimates there is currently a £6.2 billion funding gap between the amount councils have available to them, and the cost of maintaining services at the level they are. This funding challenge is made worse by a fragmented funding landscape that requires expenditure of significant resources on bidding for small amounts of funding. 

While a majority of residents remain satisfied with library services, overall satisfaction has declined significantly over the past decade as residents see the impact of funding pressures. 

Libraries are one of our most flexible and versatile front-line services. While access to books remains a core offer, libraries have expanded into the realms of digital provision, supportive health care testing and signposting, early years and educational support, and co-location with a wider variety of other services that can benefit from their trusted and neutral space within communities. This includes provision of refugee services and employment support.

As Government moves forward with plans for new youth and neighbourhood hubs, it must consider co-location with these trusted spaces, enhancing the offer of both services. Failure to do so would risk the long-term sustainability and success of both libraries and the new hubs.

Zahraa Shaikh
Public Affairs Support Officer

Phone: 020 3838 4861
Mobile: 07591353623
Email: [email protected]