Community groups have offered support for two libraries at risk of closing as part of council cuts.
The prospect emerged when Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet met yesterday (Thursday 17 July) at Hove Town Hall.
Members heard how groups in Hollingbury and Rottingdean – including the parish council – were seeking ways to prevent potential closures by bringing their libraries into community control.
The cabinet agreed to start a public constulation today (Friday 18 July) on plans to close Westdene, Hollingbury and Rottingdean libraries.
The proposals also include cutting the opening times at the Jubilee Library, in Brighton, and the Hove Carnegie Library.
This would affect Monday evenings and Sunday afternoons in Brighton and Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons in Hove.
The council is trying to save £250,000 from its annual £3.7 million libraries budget over two years.
It published a Libraries Sustainability Plan which identified Hollingbury and Westdene libraries as having the fewest visits across Brighton and Hove.
At the meeting yesterday, Rottingdean library campaigners Nicky Lloyd Owen and Dylis Brown raised concerns about the future of The Grange. The historic building houses Rottingdean library.
They highlighted the challenges for older people travelling to the nearest alternative libraries in Woodingdean and Saltdean .
Labour councillor Alan Robins, the council’s cabinet member for libraries, said that the proposed £25,000 saving at Rottingdean only related to the running costs of the library itself, not The Grange.
Councillor Robins said: “Many of our libraries are co-located with or near other local community facilities such as shops, pharmacies and leisure facilities, and we would encourage residents to reduce journeys by accessing these at the same time.
“We have a wide range of e-resources and the online library enables customers to manage their accounts remotely, ordering and renewing online and checking whether their reservations are ready to reduce unnecessary journeys.”
He agreed the situation was “not a pleasant thing” to consider but the council was at the beginning of the conversation with the wider community.
Brighton and Hove Indepedent councillor Bridget Fishleigh, who represents Rottingdean and West Saltdean ward, asked how the council could afford to spend almost £7 million on a new swimming pool but not keep all the libraries open.
She was told that the pool was a “capital project” funded by borrowing to be paid from future revenues from fees and charges.
But the libraries were funded from the council’s General Fund. In themselves, they generate a negligible sum, unlike swimming pools.
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that she had received lots of emails about the proposals because libraries were more than bricks and mortar.
Councillor Shanks said: “There’s an emotional attachment to libraries. I feel it myself. My parents met in the library. They both worked there.
“There’s also when you’re a child going in and borrowing your first book and going back to borrow completely free books and enjoying them.
“Libraries have changed over the years. Now it is a communal space and that is really valued. That is why people are upset about this.”
Councillor Shanks said that many other councils had cut libraries but this did not mean that it was a good thing to do.
The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, recalled visits to Rottingdean Library when he was a child, having attended the nearby St Margaret’s CofE Primary School.
His grandfather was involved in saving the building 40 years ago, he said.
Councillor Taylor said: “This is not something that councillors would want to proposed but it was something that was agreed in the budget.
“We would need to make some savings within the library service and clearly that’s the analysis that’s been put out there.
“We would encourage residents who use all three of those libraries to engage in the consultation and come up with ideas and alternatives to feed into the process.”
Labour council leader Bella Sankey recalled her father taking her to Brighton library when it was in Church Street when she was a child.
Councillor Sankey said: “It’s not something we want to do but we need to do things in a different way.
“We don’t want and believe any of these libraries need to close if we can find a creative way to work with communities to keep them going as community assets.”
The 12-week consultation starts today and runs until Friday 10 October.
Paper copies are available from any library, family hub, Hove Town Hall reception and the homelessness helpdesk at Bartholomew’s House.
Councillor Sankey can say all she likes that she doesn’t want libraries to close, but unless she is prepared to challenge her Labour colleagues in Westminster about the need to fund local authorities so they don’t have to do this, it’s all meaningless.
In 2023 the local Labour manifesto implied they would develop more buildings to be used as community hubs (in addition to existing libraries). I guess they are hoping people forget all of their broken promises and will accept limp excuses for not challenging the government about the impact of Labour austerity on the city.
Did you see the Bill that passed this week?
Sorry what?? Councillor Taylor says “This is not something that councillors would want to proposed but it was something that was agreed in the budget.”
Has he forgotten that he is Labour’s finance lead at the council and ultimately led on what went into his party’s budget which he then voted on and passed. It was him and his Labour colleagues who put library funding cuts in the budget. It’s madness he’s now trying to distance himself from the decision, it’s the kind of crazy talk we hear from Trump. Absolutely shocking and disrespectful to residents in this city that he’s trying to deny Labour ownership of this proposal!!!
Ms Sankeys visit has certainly paid off!
There should be five years worth of Community Infrastructure Levy or CIL tax from developers available to help fund Community facilities including Libraries by now. Can Brighton and Hove News find out how much is in this pot and what it is being spent on, if not, community facilities such as Libraries? I would also expect to be seeing new Youth Clubs and other facilities being opened around the city by now as a result of this extra income.
Area Panels are a good place to raise this question, the housing report does tell you about how much of the budget is being spent and progress made. Our LD reporter frequents pretty much all of these too!
This money should be visible in the public domain already, as should all other council budgets and expenditures.
The public should not have to dig for transparency. Or take half a day off work to ask the right question at the right meeting in order to elicit an answer, which will probably be fudged anyway if previous meetings are anything to go by.
And Communities should not have to keep having to rescue libraries when we all pay through the nose to live in this city.
Well, they public visible. I think it IS down to people to make the often simple search in the BHCC website to look at data, and it’s not hardship to send an email for minutes or to ask a question.
And if you don’t believe the answer, that’s again, a you problem, respectfully, to challenge.
Brighton is expensive though, I agree with you there. Housing stock is the main culprit, and unfortunately, that’s not an overnight fix. Everything else gets affected by it.
Local and national politicians actually doing something people want?
Fat chance that ever happening!
What’s a matter with our council taking away libraries