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Council offers only two years funding guarantee to run libraries

Published November 10, 2011 | By Andrew Grant-Adamson

News that Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire is to be run by a private company which has been given a ten year contract, sets me wondering again about the terms being offered to run libraries in Suffolk.

On Tuesday at the County council cabinet we heard that the funding on offer to charitable organisations set up to run local libraries was guaranteed for only two years.

Forget the difference in scale and the politics, there is a basic business planning issue here. With ten years of funding, no doubt under a very complicated contract, it possible to make a committment.

With only two years of funding (we are still waithing for details) I am finding it very difficult to envisage any business plan that I could be a part of recommending to the community here in Debenham.

Thanks to the reader who pointed out the literal in the headline. I had “jlibraries”. Goes to show how much I need a proof reader.

Posted in Libraries, Local Government, Suffolk County Council
  • JTM

    As I’ve said before elsewhere, all the so called pilot libraries* should pull out of this farce now; it’d be the best way of demonstrating to SCC and the media that all is not well with the County’s plans or their delivery and that the 44 libraries only have a stay of execution – or more accurately are to be starved rather than cut.

    (in truth they are just the front line, not pilots – pilot suggests an experiment or a test and with that learning, reflection and, perhaps, an alternative option if things don’t work out… In fact the pilots have been a successful means of occupying and distracting the most vocal library campaigns)

  • Pingback: Suffolk offers two years funding to libraries | Alan Gibbons’ Blog

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