The legality of this approach must surely be in doubt. The Council has a legal duty under the Local Government Finance Act 1992, to set a balanced budget i.e. budgeted expenditure must be covered by funds raised by or already available to the Council. Voluntary fundraising by local community groups falls outside the relevant definitions. If £130k is required to provide the Suffolk statutory public library service then Councillors need to either find the money from Council controlled resources or reduce library expenditure. The existence of the IPS doesn’t change this.

As a principle it cannot be right that volunteer donations have to be found to run a statutory public service. Government guidelines on funding public services make this clear. If the link between tax funding and service provision is lost then the consequences are widespread and obvious e.g. an NHS hospital could say ‘Well Mr Smith yes are responsible for mending your broken leg but our funding is such that we don’t have any money for the plaster – could you let us have a cheque to cover the cost’. As Mrs Thatcher so famously used to say – NO! NO! NO!

Suffolk residents should take a tough line with their Council over this issue. There are important principles at stake.

Maggie
Volunteers have been assisting library staff for years and yes have been doing a good job ‘assisting’ but as you know volunteers are now replacing paid library staff and i’m sorry that you are getting fed up hearing our concerns but as a Library Worker, Unison Rep and Campaigner all i hear every day is the concerns of my colleagues and members about losing their jobs (3000+ in the last 2 years) and the service being de-professionalised, fragmented and ‘hollowed out’.
We are all very aware that communities are having a gun put to their heads and told “run your library or we’ll close it” and we admire their passion and committment but how sustainable and ‘comprehensive and efficient’ this model is anyone’s guess?
Anyway maybe the way forward is for community groups to link with local campaigners and unions to fight for the retention or the return of properly resourced and staffed libraries, after all we all know that there is plenty of money in the country and that ‘austerity’ is just an ideological myth!

The debate may have changed slightly but I’m still 100% against volunteers replacing paid staff in libraries, it save little money, in my opinion isn’t sustainable and it guts the front line of the library service. There is little point laboring this point with the SCL as I don’t expect to be able to change their view, despite their view only having their experience to back it up rather than any solid evidence base.

I’m not sure what volunteers would get from paying to join a union, the unions don’t seem to be doing a great job of protecting the low paid library managers and assistants who are becoming a endangered species in libraries. If it were teaching assistant jobs at stake the entire teaching profession would be out on the streets, I cannot understand why the librarians are so quiet.

This is precisely why volunteers/ unpaid library staff should be actively encouraged to join Unite Community Union.
Although unpaid, they will have issues which relate directly to their conditions of (unpaid) employment, such as Health and Safety, unfair dismissal, expenses and training. Volunteers and unpaid staff also need to be able to co-ordinate their activities in defence of their local libraries against further cuts in provision.

Unite Community Union exists to provide unwaged people the benefits of Trade Union membership.
http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/communitymembership/

Individual membership is only £15 a year.

Elizabeth Ash, Secretary, The Library Campaign thelibrarycampaign@gmail.com
Registered charity 1102634

There will be an article, by Trevor Craig (Oxfordshire) and Shirley Burnham (Swindon) in the next issue of The Library Campaign magazine – citing evidence which suggests there are deep flaws in the notion that the ‘volunteer model’ for public libraries should be the way forward.

Extracts:
“Libraries are supposed to be completely free from conflicts of interest. Like the Civil Service, they were envisaged as impartial and neutral. But small groups of individuals, given a free hand, will always have views that can compromise those principles. This is why public libraries have been, and should continue to be, a major cornerstone of democracy, untainted by ideology and ‘isms’. ”
“There are legitimate issues of accountability related to all the above. If the local library is doing something wrong who is accountable? In a fully supported library, councillors and officers are responsible. If the library is, instead, led by local co-operation, social entrepreneurship or another group, there is no accountability via the ballot box. As a result, a library could well be used to push volunteers’ own agendas – and who could stop them?”

The same May issue will also include an article by Jim Brooks of Little Chalfont – and, of course, much more! Details + back issues: www.librarycampaign.com and – how to join http://www.librarycampaign.com/join-the-library-campaign/