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HE Institute for Government’s public services team puts together an Annual Performance Tracker.
It tracks nine public services: hospitals; general practice; adult social care; children’s social care; schools; neighbourhood services; police; courts and prisons. Stuart was one of the authors of three of these chapters. This includes neighbourhood services (
https://bit.ly/3Pbo69o) which covers public libraries and other services such as planning, regulatory services, road maintenance and waste. Stuart says the tracker “is a look at how services are performing given the levels of spending that is put into them. We use publicly available data and supplement that with qualitative interviews about what is going on in these services.”
What does he know?
The report mentions libraries several times, often in positive ways. It com- mented on the library response to Covid saying that some services like “food safety, health and safety, and trading standards… had to cease almost all activity… Others – for example, libraries – continued to operate, though using novel or previously underutilised means.”
And in relation to the current cost of living crisis the tracker said: “Authorities that we spoke to are planning to extend service provision – for example, longer opening hours in libraries – to help communities struggling with the coming winter crisis.”
Libraries received praise for how flexible they were, how they changed the type of service they delivered and how well staff transitioned to other services.
Out of the frying pan
Stuart Hoddinott is a researcher for the Institute for Government’s public services team. Here he gives buyers a sense of the environment their leaders and budget-holders are operating in and why a profile-raising performance from public libraries during the pandemic won’t save them now.
Lost in the crowd?
Stuart is not a public library expert, the sector is just one of the many that he looks at. But with a broad view across these sectors, he can assess the relative position and profile of the public library sector alongside other services. For example, did libraries really stand out during the pandemic? Stuart confirms the finding in the report, that they did, although he says they were not alone in re-inventing how they delivered services. Based on the many qualitative interviews he carried out for the Performance Tracker with local authority officers who “were not from the library sector”, he says: “For local authority officers, the main interaction with libraries during the pandemic was as a resource they could draw on. They redeployed a lot of library staff to front- line Covid services.”
But he said their entrepreneurialism was also noticed, adding: “Libraries received praise for how flexible they were, how they changed the type of service they delivered and how well staff transitioned to other services. That’s why libraries feature on the radar of local authority officers.”
Good news?
Is this higher profile as positive as it sounds? Stuart says: “My impression was that everyone I spoke to was genuinely concerned about the cost-of-living crisis and what it would do to residents. They were very interested in helping where they could. And they do see libraries as one of the only levers they can pull. Yes, that’s very encouraging for libraries, but it’s
Stuart Hoddinott.
about what happens when that butts up against the reality of finance pressure. “I think every local authority we spoke to mentioned some sort of warm bank- ing and often linked that to libraries and keeping libraries open. It was also linked to internet provision. They see these as good ways of combating the cost-of-living crisis for their residents.”
Bad news
But this probably won’t be enough. “The issue is how a local authority officer’s good intentions compete with budget constraints and finance officers during a crisis. Will they be able to follow through on their good intentions? In January, when they have a massive hole in the budget that has to be filled before the end of March are they really going to prior- itise warm spaces and wifi? I honestly don’t know.”
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