A councillor says she is “deeply sorry” 13 staff members working at council-run libraries will lose their jobs as part of cuts to the service.
At a meeting on Tuesday (January 21), Nottingham City Council’s executive members approved a new plan to cut £1.5m from its libraries service over the next two years.
To achieve this the Labour-run authority has decided to hand the Basford, Bilborough and Aspley libraries over to voluntary organisations, while Radford-Lenton Library will act as a stock hub and provide a scaled-down service.
• These Nottingham libraries to lose over 200 combined operating hours per week under new plans
Opening hours across all of Nottingham’s libraries will also be cut by more than 200 hours a week, while 36 full-time or equivalent job roles will be axed.
The majority of the roles are vacancies, however 13 current staff members will lose their jobs.
During the meeting Cllr Sam Lux (Lab), Executive Member for Carbon Reduction, Leisure and Culture, said: “Our vision is to bring new, valuable services in to these three buildings to improve their usage, while maintaining some library provision.
• New proposals put forward for Nottingham city’s libraries
“This still allows us to maintain a strong statutory service where 77 per cent of residents will be within 20 minutes walking distance of a council-run library.
“Taking £1.5m out of this budget was always going to be difficult. We will be of course deeply sorry to lose 13 of our wonderful library staff, and we recognise the reduction of hours across the remainder of libraries is very disappointing for some of our residents.”
Cllr Lux said efforts would be made to relocate and provide the staff members with other jobs elsewhere within the council.
The council is currently talking to three voluntary groups, each of which will lease a library from the authority once an agreement has been reached.
• Nottingham libraries under threat of closure to be leased to voluntary groups
Cllr Andrew Rule, of the Nottingham Independents and Independent Group, questioned if the three voluntary groups would focus on providing a library service, or if their priorities would lie elsewhere.
Cllr Lux said while the three organisations already run their own services, they had given a “soft commitment” to continue to run some level of library provision.
A protest was staged outside Loxley House ahead of the meeting, where concerns were raised over the cut to opening hours and the handing over of library provision to the voluntary sector.
Cllr Shuguftah Quddoos, who quit the Labour Party to stand independently in November in protest of continued cuts, joined protesters during their demonstration.
“The feeling is mixed because the initial proposal was to close four libraries in the city, and we currently have 15, and that would take us down to 11,” she said.
“So I am cautiously sceptical because we all known community organisations don’t have a lot of money, tend to be run by volunteers, so my concern would be around capacity and sustainability.”
