INTERVIEW
The experiment worked – will it work again?
In the aftershock of the 2008 Financial Crisis Suffolk County Council outsourced its library service. Here CEO Bruce Leeke discusses how Suffolk Libraries has navigated the last 10 years and what the next crisis might mean for outsourcing.
SUFFOLK Libraries was the first public library service to move from being council-run to becoming a mutual. That was on 1 August 2012. At the same time many other councils were either closing libraries, handing them over to volunteers or outsourcing them to organ- isations like GLL and Carillion. They were all trying to accommodate huge budget cuts during the Government’s ‘era of austerity’. In Suffolk, the council’s original plan was to shut 29 of its 44 libraries but widespread public support for the service prompted a rethink and the option of mutualisation was taken after the council sought advice. Ten years later, on 1 August 2022, as part of its anniversary celebrations, Suffolk Libraries opened a new library, and now runs 45 of them. So, the experiment has worked in Suffolk. But the potential wave of mutualisations stopped at four (Suffolk, York, Devon and Nottinghamshire, with Covid derailing Hertfordshire’s plan). Now, with the cost of living crisis set to hit public sector spending, the debate about how best to protect public libraries when councils face huge funding cuts, is starting again. Here Bruce Leeke, who has led Suffolk Libraries since February 2018, discusses this and other questions:
32 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rob Mackinlay (@cilip_reporter2,
rob.mackinlay@
cilip.org.uk) is Senior Reporter, Information Professional.
The process of outsourcing library services is usually as a response to financial crises. What is your reading of the impact of the current economic situation, and do you think it is one in which more services might be looking at mutualisation? Bruce: “There’s no doubt there will be a further squeeze on local authority finances as a result of Covid-19 and the emerging turbulence in the global economy – all while we try to recover from the pandemic. This will mean local authorities are once again in a position where they need to make tough choices. Every authority is different, and as
September 2022
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