Library lovers, you have been amazing: emailing, writing, drawing posters, painting placards, marching, knitting, holding read-ins...this city has produced an incredible Library Zine and beautiful artwork by hundreds of primary school students all shouting out: we need our libraries!
This week, we have an urgent new action. Another moment to share your library love.
A council committee called the "Neighbourhoods Overview and Scrutiny Committee" is supposed to discuss the council’s proposals for libraries and hold cabinet members and officers to account. Their next meeting is Wednesday, November 27th at 2pm, and we want to be sure that the committee discusses the proposed 40% cut to our library service. The committee’s job is to ensure that the voice of the public is heard, so please speak up!
We recommend emailing all members of the committee with your concerns about the libraries consultation and the proposed 40% cut to the libraries budget. Please emphasise how important your libraries are to you, how damaging these cuts would be, and that you expect the committee to provide proper scrutiny and critique of the current consultation process and proposals.
The committee members to contact are:
Councillor Shabrana Hussain (Chair) | |
If one of the councillors is your ward councillor, please do also email them individually expressing your concerns.
What’s an overview and scrutiny committee, you ask? Our council has an “executive governance structure”, which means most power rests with the leader (Councillor Cotton at the moment) and the cabinet. To balance this, the council has “overview and scrutiny committees” that are supposed to “ensure decision makers within the Council are held accountable” and “assist in strategic policy development, drive improvement in public services, and ensure that the voice of the public is heard.” (That quote is from the council’s constitution).
Yes, these committees are supposed to ensure that YOUR voices are heard and enable councillors to question cabinet members and officers about policy proposals and implementation.
How has scrutiny of the proposal to cut our library services been going? Well, there doesn’t seem to have been much. In their last meeting on October 16 2024, Councillor Suleman, Cabinet member responsible for libraries, sent apologies. Halfway through the meeting, according to the minutes, it was communicated that it was not possible for relevant officers to attend either. Right at the end of the meeting Councillor Knowles (Lib Dem/Moseley) asked, “Chair, were we not going to talk about libraries?” and expressed her dismay that they were not going to. The Chair of the committee explained that officers and Councillor Suleman would be coming in November to discuss the proposed budget savings from libraries and then in January to discuss “everything”. That seems rather late to start proper scrutiny!
For more information on the next meeting of the committee, visit this page.
And what’s going on with the libraries proposals? Believe it or not, the Council have announced yet another round of consultation from Nov. 14 to Dec. 12 because they made a mistake with the library rankings in the previous phase. For unexplained reasons, these (not small) changes in ranking do not affect their recommended Option 4 but only Option 3. In their own rather confusing words:
“In the final phase of Libraries consultation, we based option 3 on library rankings. The rankings were generated by a priority list which balanced community need and usage and access data. Subsequently, an error has been identified in the priority list rankings. This has been corrected and a revised option 3 produced which is included in the corrected option 3 pack.
This does not change the recommended option (option 4), however, we welcome comments on the revised option 3, details found on page 13 and 14 of the corrected option 3 pack.”
You can read more here: https://www.birminghambeheard.org.uk/bcc/lc24-co3/
We don’t really understand what is going on either. We will be sharing our frustration, confusion and library love with our local councillors…
Thank you for spending your time reading this post and sending those emails! For more library love, please enjoy the Brum Library Zine, now in virtual form: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/83a3fc029e.html
コメント