Will the Bookseller report this? Will campaigners celebrate this?

Of course not. Not in a million years.

Sorry, Bromley resident, my mistake.

I turn my attention to Mr Craig. Mr Craig, are you a Lewisham resident and a regular user of Lewisham libraries?

I mean, if you actually come from Oxfordshire or somewhere then can I suggest you stop telling people like me who actually live here what we should think about our services, because we live here, and you don’t.

I am happy that Lewisham have found a way to keep their libraries open when they have to face significant social services demands that Bromley could never dream of.

As for the comments comparing Lewisham to Southwark, well Lewisham’s capital investment in Downham, Manor House and Deptford has been fantastic. Incidentally, when was the last major capital investment by Bromley in their libraries, Bromley resident?

And, Bromley resident, please do not post second hand comments as an effort to provide “balance”.

The lack of reality around the libraries debate is astounding.

Meanwhile, Ian, thanks for your offer to participate in the debate. Sadly, I think I will decline. If you express a view that the library campaigners deem heretical, no matter how sincerely you hold it, you are damned for eternity and often subject to rather unpleasant comment. I’ll restrict myself to comments such as these if it’s all the same to you.

I would like to comment about the comments made from the person saying they are volunteering:

The toilets have been breaking down for over 9 years in this library because of a bad plumbing installation and actually these toilets had a short term fix back on the 6th August and we have had three quote to fix this problem once and for all instead of what was being done before with short term fixes being done all the time and costing more money in the long term.

Regarding the books – We have had over 600 new books delivered over the past two months, and we will be getting more new books soon and we are put of the online Library service where library users can see the catalogue of over five million books and have them sent to their community library.

Eco has just spent £36,000 fixing the roofs which have been leaking in all the libraries, in fact if we had not have got Sydenham done before the bad weather in June and July, the library would have had to close for health and safety reason. There were leaks in the childrens area and the electrics were starting to have problems because of the roofs. So I do not think we are doing things on the cheap.

We have now started painting the upstairs rooms, which have not been used for many year, and our first tenant we have given space to is City Reads.

Regarding visitor numbers using the libraries, these went down when we first took over because the press kept saying they were closing and people thought they were closed, now we have got the numbers back up and some months we have had more visitors than before.

Regards

Darren Taylor

Darren

That’s very interesting information, thank you, Bromley Resident. I think each and every one of the 151 library authorities are approaching things in different ways and I am glad to hear that Bromley is doing things better. Certainly, they’re not in the same mental category I keep Lewisham in.

Thanks for this. I have done so.

Bromley have been far more creative. Firstly it’s teamed up with Bexley to cut back office staff. Secondly it ran a consultation earlier this year, and by the looks of things it will cut opening or maybe close one or two libraries (Burnt Ash and Southborough) rather than one of its initial ideas to cut eight.
FYI Council report from July:
http://cds.bromley.gov.uk/documents/s50001878/Part%201%20Report%20Template.pdf

Similarly, Southwark is facing similar, if not deeper cuts, but again is keeping all libraries open, even refurbishing Peckham (currently) and opening Canada Water in November.

People have every right to be annoyed with Lewisham, as instead of thinking about how it can manage its costs, it went for the “easy” option and shut down libraries. This is precisely what Brent did, although, to give credit to Lewisham, they wouldn’t even let volunteers take over.

“Funnily enough, I volunteer at one of the Lewisham branches mentioned so I have some insight into this. While the volunteers, particularly the full-timers, are trying their best, it’s simply impossible to provide a proper service when you rely on a rolling procession of people who have never worked with books and who don’t know about basic library procedures.

To make matters worse, the company running the library is cheap enough that they refuse to even fix the toilets, meaning the staff often have to go round the corner to a bar or coffee shop instead. And of course the supply of new books has been effectively stopped with staff unsure whether the books still there will be transferred to other Lewisham libraries or not (because giving council property to a private company would of course be completely unfeasible).

If there are less people using the libraries, it’s because the service has deteriorated because of the government’s negligence, not because the customers (many of which are elderly, vulnerable or parents of small children, who live nearby and who can’t feasibly reach another of the borough’s libraries) don’t want a library service.”

The link to the article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/05/library-closures-ed-vaizey?INTCMP=SRCH