Damian White’s a right-wing extremist who oozes machismo fuelled malice whilst inflicting spending cuts. His tragic lack of political aspiration only extends to keeping, “council tax increases as low as possible..”(2) (my emphasis)
Damian reduced Havering’s budget by £2 million when he defied government approved increases. The two million would have saved the library service and kept Chafford pool open.
Damian presents his political choices as though they’re inevitable.
“The funding Havering Council gets from central government has reduced by over £29 million since 2014/15 and £7 million more will be lost over the next two years.”(3)
This seems to tell us that cuts have been inflicted by the government. They haven’t. If the government’s proposition had been followed, libraries would have been saved. The 1,196,805 library users were sacrificed because they aren’t valued by Damian.
1,196,805 users of the libraries are victims of Damian’s obsession. His choice over Chafford…
Another day, another public consultation! This time, Havering Council are asking for our opinions on its library service provision. The biggest proposed change to the way it runs our libraries is to make five of them ‘community run’ – meaning that they will be staffed by volunteers instead of paid employees, but will still receive some “financial and strategic support” from Town Hall.
The five libraries affected are Collier Row, Elm Park, Gidea Park, Harold Wood, and South Hornchurch. The ‘community run’ library model has been adopted by many councils across the country in recent years. This includes our neighbours in Barking and Dagenham – although that council also closed a number of its remaining branches at the same time, something which Havering is not proposing to do. Yet!
Speaking to the Romford Recorder, Romford Civic Society head and one-time Conservative councillor Andrew Curtin said he was “hugely concerned … about the destruction Havering Council is seriously planning on wreaking on our hugely under-pressure libraries. Bearing in mind what libraries can do for mental health and the phenomenal impact on young people, what they’re proposing – it’s not clear enough”. And he is very right about the lack of clarity in these proposals! Even the Council’s consultation document admits that until a volunteer group for each branch is formed, “it is not possible to determine how many hours per week these libraries would be open, nor how many library staff and at what grade would be needed to provide ongoing support”.
To get an idea of what the opening hours for these community-run libraries might be, we can take a peek across the border into Barking and Dagenham. How have they fared? Well, Marks Gate Library (serving an area to the west of Collier Row and to the north of Chadwell Heath) is open for only four days a week, from 10am to 5pm. It does not open at all on Saturdays, which means that residents who work conventional hours do not get a chance to visit it – unless they take a day off. As someone who grew up in a family who owned very few books but frequently went to the local library (one of the branches affected, incidentally), I share the concerns that Andrew Curtin and many others hold about these proposed changes.
The consultation can be accessed here, and closes on September 18th.
HAVERING SPECIAL 