List of Library Trusts and prospective Library Trusts

Established

• Dundee transferred its libraries late in 2011 to Leisure & Culture Dundee.
• Falkirk changed over 1st July 2011 (inc. leisure centres, museums as well as libraries – may save £1m in rates and VAT).  Library opening hours will be reduced by eight hours per branch from September.
• Glasgow – a combination of Trust (for tax advantages) and CIC (for trading advantages).
• Greenwich – GLL took over provision in April 2012, immediately facing a strike from the Unite union due to worries over terms and conditions.
• Herefordshire – Council pay community centre staff to run Peterchurch Library
• Highland – converted to High Life Highland in Sep 2011.
• Redbridge – Vision – Originally leisure centres, the trust took over responsibility for libraries in May 2011. Trust received extra grant from council December 2011.
• Rochdale – Link4Life - Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) includes local studies but not libraries.
• Shropshire – Cleobury Mortimer Library. When not staffed by library, community centre staff are paid by council to help with self-service machines.
• South Lanarkshire.
• Lewisham.  Eco Computer Systems run one ex-library in Deptford as a community enterprise (combining it with computer recycling) and have recently taken over three more in Crofton Park, Grove Park and Sydenham. Darren Taylor, manager says “The three libraries we took over do not have the recycling business at all in them, just a small cupboard which was never being used is now utilised to store donated IT equipment. It is then collected and taken to Pepys Resource Centre, where it is got back into reuse and installed into community centres, sheltered and care homes and given to underprivileged families.”.  ADP Projects has been employed by Eco Computers to improve the building at Crofton Park.

“ADP Projects is in the process of finalising designs, with the help of the steering committee, to transform these buildings into sustainable and innovative, mixed use community hubs. The vision for the libraries is to establish a mutually supporting network of community owned and managed buildings which will include a staffed library service integrated fully with Lewisham’s other libraries but also providing IT training, pre-employment training, local history centres, areas for recycling IT equipment, space for local groups use and community cafés where people can meet. Additional space will be created to accommodate enterprise units for business incubation and creation.”

• Luton.  Luton Culture runs theatres, libraries and museums as a charitable trust.  It has gained funding from several sources, including notably Luton Council who can donate profits from Luton Airport to the trust without paying tax on them.
• Northern Ireland.  The whole of Northern Ireland is run by an arms-length operation called Libraries NI.  It is currently consulting in major cuts to the library service and has been accused, surprisingly, of a lack of local responsiveness and even of a lack of a regional strategy, treating Belfast Central Library (for instance) as just another branch.
• Peterborough’s – this Trust, Vivacity, has merged museums, art galleries, libraries, sports and leisure into one organisation (most of its trustees are from private enterprise).  This trust has been described as “..politically motivated, set up when the coalition government came to power. It is run by 300 staff augmented by 190 volunteers – that’s not what we want in South Tyneside. We want good service at affordable prices.” South Tyneside Councillor Eddie McAtominey.  Already affected by a £171k cut in council funding in 2011, fears of library closures have been raised by a further cut of £100k in 2012.  Vivacity started having volunteers used to extend opening hours as pilot project for three months (4/3/12).
• Suffolk – Suffolk Libraries.  Library services to be run by an Industrial and Provident Society, with Bungay becoming the first branch formally under its control. Confirmed will transfer libraries to an Industrial and Provident Society, with 95% of funding from council.  Hoped will avoid 80% reduction in property rates, remove “council bureaucracy” and allow for more grant applications.  Cost will be £652,000 to set up but would be 27.6 per cent cheaper to run than the current system, assuming rates exemptions stay in place.  See details here on what an Industrial and Provident Society is. Previously: interested in community interest company or other variant).  The board of the IPS is currently appointed (that is, nominated, not elected) but will be elected by members of the IPS in late 2013.Separate to this county-wide Trust, one of the seven pilot non-council runners of the smallest libraries will be run by its own community interest company.
• Wandsworth. GLL appears to have been given the contract to run library services (15/11/12).  York Gardens is run as a “Direct Services Organisation” with volunteers supporting it. “York Gardens has been set up as a Direct Services Organisation and we’ve been trying to work out what it means over the past few months. Here’s how it has been defined: As a Direct Services Organisation, YGLCC operates as an ‘arms length’ part of Wandsworth Council.  The DSO is still accountable to the Council for approval of its activities and the setting of its targets, fees and charges.  The Council still provides the revenue budget for which officers are responsible and accountable.  The budget – income and expenditure – is ringfenced to the DSO and is not used to sustain other Council budgets or activities.”
• Warrington – LiveWire – 2012.  A CIC combined with leisure centres
• Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust. Created in 2003, paid for by a council grant/external funding/income generation.  It has had some successes (extending services and running services from other councils) but it currently facing a cut of over £1m and considering closing 6 of its libraries. The Trust document “The Next Chapter” details the changes.  The Trust has a trading arm which lost a reported £250,000 on an event, leading to calls for the service to be taken back under Council control.  The true scale of the loss is unclear as the Trust claims the figure is confidential and “private”.

In the pipeline

• Bromley  (will also be merging services with Bexley).
• Cheshire West and Chester (considering moving to trust or community interest company)
• Derby
• Durham will be transferring libraries to a “non profit distributing organisation” after cutting them by £1.4m p.a.  On top of this, it is claimed, “the transfer to the NPDO would save more than a million pounds a year“.  However, the move has been put on hold due to concerns that the result of a government review this Summer (21/5/12) will remove tax advantages.
• Ealing
• East Lothian
• Fife (expects to save £380,000 per year just in tax plus £250,000 in efficiency savings), confirmed 3/11/11.
• Greenwich has voted unanimously to transfer its libraries to a trust run by GLL.  Trade unions are considering strike action (15/2/12) and the Unite trade union is considering legal action against this transfer (24/2/12). This has not deterred the council’s cabinet which voted through the transfer (21/3/12).
• Islington (trust option now ruled out “due to legal complications and public objections”).
• Lambeth
• Moray
• North Ayrshire
• Northeast Lincolnshire – Libraries and leisure centres to move into combined trust, after private company contract for leisure centres ends in 2013.
• Shropshire
• South Tyneside (Cost of changeover may be £100,000)
• Wakefield.
• York. Consultation on future of libraries, including on them being run by a community benefit society(1/10/12). Pros and cons of transferring to a Community Benefit Society and the committee paper outlining the reasons for the change (2/1/13)