Minutes:
Miss. H. Worman CC
asked the Chairman the following question under Standing Order 7:-
“During the public
consultation on the libraries issue the costs quoted for the provision of
library services in Ibstock might have been misleading because two years rental
of the building was used to calculate the cost of using the library.
Will the Chairman
agree with me that in such a sensitive matter as this it is important to have
good robust information so that communities seeking to work with the Council
can plan with confidence?”
The Chairman replied
as follows:-
1.
The
County Council seeks in all of its consultations, irrespective of sensitivity,
to uphold the consultation principles it adopted in February 2014 for engaging
residents, service users and stakeholders when reviewing or changing existing
services, policies and commissioning arrangements or developing new ones. The
principles reflect the Coalition Government’s Consultation Principles, aiming
to help policy makers and service managers make the right judgements about
when, with whom and how to consult. The key principle is that the potential
impact of the change or decision on which we consult is proportionate to the
scope and type of the consultation undertaken.
The County Council seeks to be
clear on what the purpose of the consultation or engagement is and what is
within the scope of the consultation. We ensure that we provide the right
information so that informed responses can be made. This includes making
available relevant evidence underpinning the policy or service change under
consideration.
2.
In
respect of the recent consultation on libraries and the specific issue raised
regarding Ibstock Library I understand that the Lead Member for Heritage,
Leisure and Arts provided an earlier response in respect of this matter as
follows:
The proposals that the County
Council consulted on were for the County Council to continue running the 16
most used libraries (who between them account for around 75% of usage) and to
work in partnership with communities to support them to run the 36 remaining
libraries.
The proposals were therefore
based on usage, not on relative costs or efficiency of individual
libraries. So, the proposals relating to Ibstock library were clearly not
in any way based on the actual or relative costs of issuing books there – so to
say we have been misleading the public is incorrect.
On the matter in question, the
figure comes from information we provided, in response to requests received
during the consultation, to groups potentially interested in running the
library in partnership with the County Council to give them an overview of the
actual running costs of providing a library in that location. For this we
provided the actual financial transaction data for the most recent financial
year 2013-14.
As I understand it, during
2013-14 we paid the rent for both 2013-14 and outstanding rent for previous
years – which indeed leads to the rental costs shown not being reflective of
annual costs. This information was clearly provided as a guide only and the
accompanying guidance note makes it clear that the Council assumes it will
continue paying rent where this applies, so that this anomaly would have been
of little consequence to those interested in taking over Ibstock library. In
any case, as soon as the figure was queried, we were able to clarify where the
figure came from.
The consultation closed on 7
July 2014, and work is now underway to analyse the results of the survey, the
public meetings, petitions and other responses in preparation for a decision by
our Cabinet on the 19 September 2014 on the best way to proceed.
Miss. H. Worman CC asked the
following supplementary question:-
"Thank you chair for your response. I am
grateful for your acknowledgement that the Ibstock
library figures were not quite accurate. This Committee is looking into
the wider issue on how we move forward with library provision and the Cabinet
is set to ask officers to review the measures used in which library's continue
to receive funding.
The reply focuses on usage not on efficiency. Would the Chair not agree that cost effectiveness is a good measure and should also be used in deciding whether or not a library should continue receiving funding? "
Having been invited by the
Chairman to respond to the supplementary question the Director of Adults and
Communities indicated as follows:-
“The County Council is currently proposing to undertake further work on alternatives in making conclusions and will take into account the comments that have been made today.”