“When authorities consider reorganising library services it is important that they have assessed the local needs of their communities and have prepared a strategic plan for their library services. Library authorities must provide a service which best meets local needs within available resources.”
Jarvis presses Vaizey on library closures

Discussing the above.

I think authorities can still argue that they can provide a comprehensive library service and the full breadth of our literary heritage. They may try and argue that the 1964 Act does not give a definition of the word ‘efficient’, and so this is anybody’s guess (we have seen this over the past year), however the definition is the sense of the word as used at the time of the formulation of the Act and what MPs voted for at the time, if this were to be successfully challenged then the public might rightly at that point start to question to what extent we have the rule of law in this country (criminologists usually acknowledge that the larger proportion of crime on our streets and in our workplaces goes unreported or unrecorded otherwise, to see this happen at government level though is very much another matter).

If Brent argue that any long term fall in usage is for any reason other than it becoming less efficient for people to access literature via their libraries then from what we have seen previously (these authorities are not properly briefed on the law concerning their libraries) a ‘frivolous’ argument will usually follow.

An authority could argue that it has no obligation to meet any standards as to the level of service provision (either comprehensive or efficient) — I would personally say that a) the standards we enjoy from our library service should over the years as our society progresses do no more than actually get better, and b) the baseline standards were what MPs actually voted for in 1964 – Parliamnet has not as yet been presented with an alternative improving on those standards (or possibly arguing that the Standards are no longer relevant otherwise). Without further ado in this paragraph, that essentially is the crux of the matter. If councils cannot afford to pay for statutory standards they should then simply and they are from what I understand well within their rights simply say so.

My own conclusion is that the DCMS have a remit in law to make stepwise changes to library standards, and the public can quite resonably expect in a fully functioning democracy for these to be both transparent and properly reasoned based on accurate research, but this has quite simply not happened. Instead we are presented by Government with a library service designed so that authorities still have to provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library service, but the range of literature and how efficient it is to use the library service is now entirely up to the authority – there are no minimum standards they have to meet in any way, shape or form whatsoever. There was a point prior to the 1964 Act (when a library service became mandatory) when every authority, though discretionary, did actually provide a library service, but the quality of which varied greatly throughout the country. We have it appears been returned to this point in time.