This is what Philip Bromberg of the Preston Community Library Campaign presented to Cabinet yesterday evening:
I
am speaking on behalf of Preston Community Library, a charity which, as
I hope you all know, is currently running a library on a temporary
licence in the Preston Library building on Carlton Avenue East.
As
you know, Brent Labour Party made a very clear pledge before last
year's election to offer the Preston Library building "at a peppercorn
rent to any local group who can provide a sustainable community
library....that is our pledge....We will not open to competitive tender
in order to give preference to local groups."
Since
last year we have done everything that you asked us to do. We've
submitted a business plan for a permanent library which has been praised
by Brent CVS. From a standing start barely a month ago, we are now
offering the full range of traditional library services - we have
several thousand books available for borrowing, including a wide range
of large print books which cater to the needs of elderly people, we have
a children's library which is lending books to a local primary school,
we have a range of newspapers and magazines, we offer study space and,
from today, we have four public access computers and WiFi which are free
to library users.
We're
also already offering much more than a traditional library. We have
(free) ESOL classes on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, and we're talking
to a local school who want to fund us to offer these classes to their
parents. We've trained two new ESOL teachers. We're running yoga classes
for adults and for families. We run movement, exercise and dance
classes. We host a weekly creative writing group and a Scrabble group.
We've worked very closely with vulnerable adults from a local
residential home who've played an important part in getting the library
open. And very soon - with funding from you - we will be running a
community cinema. In short, we are already doing very precisely the
things which Brent says it wants community groups to be doing. Needless
to say, all of this has taken a huge amount - thousands of hours - of
very hard work by an extraordinarily dedicated group of people.
Bearing all of this in mind, I have a couple of observations to make about the proposed Property and Asset Strategy:
The
third objective of the new strategy (p.3) is to increase ongoing
revenue generation, but you do note that "clearly there will be times
when these objectives will be at odds with each other". So I remind you
again that your election promise was to offer the Preston Library
building at a peppercorn rent.
And
on pp. 7 & 11 the strategy says that "all opportunities for
Community Asset Transfer should be advertised" and recommends a
competitive process. Competitive tendering was, of course, explicitly
ruled out in the Labour Party's election pledge last year. We're not,
though, worried about an open and transparent process, provided that
process takes place in the context of your very clear election pledge to
support a community library in Carlton Avenue East.
Preston
Community Library is the area's only secular community space; it is
fully accessible and open to everyone regardless of race, religion, age
or gender. In barely a month, and on a very restrictive temporary
licence, PCL is already doing hugely impressive work. When we have a
proper lease, we will be able to do much, much more.
