For a whole hour, one by one, local library users were invited to address the council chamber. Seven-year-old Jasmine bravely explained that her mum “can’t afford to keep buying my books”, while her older brother Jackson explained that he used the library to do his homework.
Morris, aged 90, said elderly people used his branch “as a home, not just a library” and warned that the neighbourhood would “deteriorate” if the council closed it.
Violet, chair of the borough’s pensioners’ forum, broke down in tears as she told councillors: “Local people feel disappointed by the council, which recently invested in modernising the library, only to propose to close it just three months after reopening.”
But the council’s cabinet could not be persuaded. The town hall was facing cuts of £100 million over four years, which had forced it to find savings from the library service.
Regularly interrupted by heckling from the audience, the cabinet member in charge explained: “We are designing a library service supposed to promote libraries to the whole population.”
The decision was made. Just minutes after Jasmine, Morris, Violet and many other residents emotionally and passionately pleaded with them to save the six libraries under threat, Labour councillors voted the plans through.
To this day, the evening I spent covering a Brent Council meeting for the Wembley and Willesden Observer in April 2011 is burned into my brain. On the one hand, it was commendable that so many residents were allowed to address the chamber before such a huge decision was made.
On the other, I will never forget how cold-hearted the senior councillors came across as when defending their decision to close half the borough’s libraries, apparently unswayed by the tears and the anger they had just seen from their own residents, while deflecting responsibility onto George Osborne’s shoulders – council leader Ann John even suggested residents could buy books from Tesco instead.
Brent’s decision was unsuccessfully challenged in the High Court before the campaigners admitted defeat and the six library closures went ahead in 2012. The council had got its way, but John was ousted as leader months later and both she and cabinet member James Powney were deselected as Labour candidates ahead of the 2014 local election.
The huge controversy over Brent’s library closures and the price paid for it by the politicians involved acted as a warning to other London councils – of the range of cuts they might consider during the austerity era, few were likely to be more controversial.
Nevertheless, plenty of boroughs went ahead with their own library closures in the years that followed. It is difficult to be precise with the numbers because some libraries, while offloaded by their councils, have continued to be run by community groups with volunteer staff. But my research suggests 47 libraries in London have been either closed completely or removed from council control between 2010 and 2024 – accounting for around 13 per cent of the total.
Last month a BBC investigation also found that, across London, 99 council-run libraries have reduced their opening hours since 2016 and more than 400 library jobs have been lost.
No borough has since gone as far as Brent went in 2011. Well, not yet. Enfield, along with Hillingdon, currently has the highest number of council-run libraries in London at 16. But it is now proposing to close eight of them.
Enfield Council, as I’ve been reporting for over year in my paper Enfield Dispatch, is teetering on a financial precipice as it struggles to cope with soaring demand for temporary housing, in addition to more than a decade of government-imposed austerity. Enfield first mooted cuts to its library service last year, but the news that it was proposing to close as many of half of them still came as a shock when I revealed it two months ago.
The consultation on the closures, which runs until 14 November, explains that “the way people use and access our libraries has changed over the past ten years” with “increased digitalisation of services and new digital opportunities” seeing more people making use of IT and electronic services and borrowing far fewer books.
Interestingly, the consultation also explains, “there is an increasing need for warm public spaces in winter and cool public spaces in summer” and that “our libraries have become community hubs, offering a breadth of services and support”.
This is a key point – it’s not just about the books. When I attended a consultation drop-in event at John Jackson Library in Bush Hill Park last month, this was reflected in the concerns people raised. They talked of taking part in exercise classes, bringing their children in to play, socialising, and of the library acting as a “safe space” and a “sanctuary”. There was hardly any mention of books.
Community groups will often hire space in their local libraries for meetings, while many library buildings provide the only free public toilet in the area. Ironically, libraries play an important role in council consultations, as residents can request free hard copies of surveys and fill them in, with help from staff if needed. Libraries can also provide advice about access to welfare and benefits, or point people toward local charities that can help them. Many boroughs, Enfield included, have moved customer service staff into their biggest libraries.
Enfield’s need to save money is undeniable, with the library cuts helping to plug a predicted £10 million hole in the next year’s budget. But the projected annual saving of up to £630,000 is, curiously, less than the £675,000 neighbouring Haringey is predicting to save from its own library cuts, which are to be achieved without closing a single building.
Haringey’s alternative approach is to focus on reducing opening hours instead of the number of buildings, probably in hope that when its financial situation improves it can simply increase the hours again. Its consultation, also still ongoing, says that in recent years “the council has made significant investments into library buildings to make them more accessible and user friendly” and that “it is the council’s plan for this investment to continue for the benefit of communities in years to come”.
Closing buildings and selling them off to developers is essentially a “nuclear” option that leaves little opportunity for restoration of services in future. But Enfield’s consultation explains that reducing opening hours alone will not make the savings it needs and that its buildings suffer from significant maintenance issues, pointing out that “the proposed strategy of providing the library service from fewer buildings would avoid an estimated £5.3 million in future upkeep and maintenance costs”.
Such reasoning is unlikely to convince residents, however, and I’m expecting a similar scene at Enfield Civic Centre in the near future to the one I witnessed in Brent 13 years ago.
Elsewhere in London, two other financially troubled boroughs are also now moving to close libraries.
Thrice-bankrupted Croydon is set to close four later this month, with the council saying the decision was “based on analysis of the buildings including visitor numbers, size and condition of the buildings, the size and needs of the communities they serve and running costs”.
Havering, which was handed £54 million by the government at the start of this year to avoid its own effective bankruptcy, consulted this summer on a plan to close five libraries which the council says are in “poor condition or are approaching the end of their natural life”.
Meanwhile, there are fears of imminent library cuts being announced in both Greenwich and Hackney .
One thing that could still save London’s under-threat libraries would be if community groups stepped up to run them.
The idea is not a new one. In Lewisham, eight library closures have been avoided over the years after community groups were handed the keys. But the switch from professional staff to volunteers is never seamless and without the solidity of council backing crowdfunding, grants and partnerships with larger organisations are often essential.
Lewisham Ledger describes the move away from direct council provision of libraries in the borough as a “remarkable and sometimes bitter story of spending cuts, job losses, public protests and community spirit”.
Forest Hill Library was taken over in 2016 by a traders association and a local society, with help from an arts organisation that ran a facility next door, “but then the hard work began”. A derelict shop was done up to sell second-hand books and vinyl, providing a subsidy to fund the library, a local school donated its computers and the upper floor was converted into studios to provide rental income.
One of the volunteers at Forest Hill Community Library told the Ledger: “I’m pleasantly surprised that so many people still use libraries, and I think people are really grateful it exists because it serves so many functions – reading, computers, classes, child-friendly groups and so on. It’s a shame it’s only community-run because it’s in such frequent use and open seven days a week, but the public nevertheless use it a great deal and are appreciative that it’s been kept open.”
Other borough councils to have handed one or more of their libraries to community groups include Barnet, Bexley, Ealing, Harrow and Waltham Forest. Could Enfield be next? The council is now explicitly inviting any such groups to submit business plans as part of its consultation, should they have “the capability and funds necessary to operate and maintain and repair a library”.
One experiment that doesn’t seem likely to be repeated, however, is Lambeth’s much-derided move to install gym equipment at one of its library buildings in 2018 – the arrival of treadmills and rowing machines at Carnegie Library in Herne Hill even prompted mocking from a Southwark councillor who said his borough was “very proud to be opening libraries and not turning them into bizarre hybrids like some boroughs near us”.
Whatever the future for the capital’s libraries, it seems clear that they will need to adapt to the changing needs of Londoners – as well as the ever-shrinking budgets of their local councils.
James Cracknell is editor of the Enfield Dispatch. Follow him on X/Twitter. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money that other people don’t. Details HERE.