The Big Society’s health is recovering. Despite the fevered clamour about library
closures, some councils and communities are being positive about re-organising their services.
After wide consultation with schools and local people, Wandsworth council has saved the York Gardens library in Battersea. Volunteers have agreed to form a ‘staffing mutual’ to run the library, this move is being supported by the £10m fund that the DCLG has allocated to cover the start up costs for nascent staff mutuals. In addition to that, two local schools have hired spare rooms on the premises to use as additional classrooms and both intend to maintain the library’s internet facilities with full public access.
The private sector is playing its part too. The Bookseller reports that the chief executive of Bloomsbury, Nigel Newton, is calling for publishers to ‘adopt’ libraries. For its part, the publishing house is providing volunteers to cover libraries in Kensington and Chelsea and East Sussex, and executive director, Richard Charkin, is adopting one of the many threatened libraries in Hackney.
Elsewhere, stringent spending settlements are encouraging communities to take more responsibility. Reading Council has cut £25,000 of grants made to various ethnic minority community groups, which enabled their children to ‘learn their family language in a formal setting and potentially achieve accreditation for this.’ The council believes that this activity should be the quintessence of the Big Society and it expressed the hope that the ‘communities will continue to support their children in learning their family in a formal setting’. Though broadly supportive of the Big Society, some voluntary sector workers see the insatiable demand for government as the greatest impediment to decentralisation. It will be intriguing to see whether the communities in Reading can manage their children’s extra education without recourse to the council.
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