The meeting of Barnet Borough Council’s children, education, libraries and safeguarding committee on October 28 received a report which was breathtaking in its outrageous assumptions and recommendations.

It was attended by a packed gallery of supporters of libraries and nursery schools threatened with closure. The questions from the public were curtailed after just 30 minutes, when the committee chairman realised that the truth in exposing the fallacies in the report and the proposed decimation of Barnet’s library service were embarrassing to him.

The report, basically, is based on the fallacy that £2.85million must be axed from the library budget. The suggestion in the report is that this activity is ring-fenced, and the outrageous conclusion from it is that there are only three options open to the council —all of which involve the decimation of the library service.

This premise is clearly flawed and the report should have been rejected by the committee, and the curtailment of the views of the public was no advertisement for democracy. So why should £2.85m be cut from the library budget, when the spendthrift activities of the council are allowed to continue unchecked?

It may well be possible, for example, to save £18m from the common sense options suggested by the costed alternatives in the public domain put forward by the local bloggers Mr Reasonable and Mr Mustard:-

  • Ceasing to pay fancy prices to consultants for arguably poor advice.
  • Ceasing to pursue the current policy of refusing to accept coins in cash car parking meters, and instead doing what other councils do, and make a profit from car parking.
  • Terminating some of the ten-year contracts with Capita, and instead having services provided in-house.

And what about appointing immediately a chartered librarian to head the library service and advise the council on how to run it, rather than destroying it merely to keep council tax down?

Keith Martin

Friern Barnet community library grants working group