Private Eye on Suffolk libraries plan
Much excitement today about an item in Private Eye’s Library News which compares Suffolk county Council’s suggestion that a community interest company should be responsible for its libraries with problems over a CIC in Glasgow.
The Eye says:
Before Suffolk rushes ahead, a glance at Glasgow might be informative. in 2007 the city council there outsourced all its museums, libraries and leisure centres by setting up Culture and Sport Glasgow, an arms-length charitable company with a CIC to operate as a “trading arm” and do the things a charity legally couldn’t.
There are cuts and redundancies facing all the services provided through Culture and Sport Glasgow, now expensively rebranded as Glasgow Life.
But while we know little about Suffolk’s plans, which seem to be for a social enterprise, possibly a CIC, to administer the county libraries, the comparisons with Glasgow are limited.
The CIC in Glasgow was set up to handle trading parts of the organisation, in much the same way as other major charities use them to run their shops. It represents a tiny part of the service.
Glasgow Life is a charity, funded largely by the City Council, which has got to make savings of £10m over three years (BBC). But this is on a £100m plus annual budget (Glasgow Life annual review).
That is a small cut compared with the 30% saving Suffolk CC is demanding in its library budget over thee years.
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