There is no doubt that this country is in dire financial difficulties. A toxic mix of political hubris and banker greed has produced the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. The UKs private sector has been suffering severely and the countrys gross domestic product has fallen by a massive 6% but, so far, the public sector has escaped virtually unscathed.

The badly damaged private sector produces the wealth which funds the public sector. Therefore, this state of affairs cannot continue. There is no magic formula which will allow it to do so. Public sector cuts are inevitable. It is better to accept this and plan properly rather than to simply deny the fact.

There are a couple of other unfortunate facts which also need to be faced. Central government tends to push onto local government as much as possible of any required funding reduction, so that the centre can avoid some of the pain. In addition, London and the South East are always expected to provide a subsidy for the rest of the country.

The prognosis for the London boroughs is not good. Funding will be cut and the probability is that these Local Authorities will be required to endure more pain than those elsewhere in the country.

Commentators have estimated that the overall funding cut needed to get the public sector back to an affordable level is between 10% & 30%. The milch cow status of London suggests that an optimistic minimum of 15% and 20-25% on average is more likely in the capital.

In every Town Hall in London for the next two or three years, the main topic of debate will be The Cuts. Whichever political party is in power locally, the first proposal will be cut the library service its the easy option. For many Council Officers and Members this will be considered to be the same as close libraries and, for a few, it will be equated with dispense with the service completely. After all, books are cheap and there is no need for a free supply of them in the 21st century.

That is the argument often put forward and, no doubt, it makes sense if you are earning a good salary. Try making sense of it, if you are on the state pension, unemployment benefit or the minimum wage. The choice then would be a book or food on the table. You can provide a meal for a family for the price of a book.

The easy option has been used so often in the past that it has become a habit a bad habit. Little thought is given to the long term effects of these repeated reductions in service levels and UK public libraries have been sent into a steep decline which has lasted for a generation.

Long-term damage could have been avoided, if steps had been taken to correct the adverse effects of each cut when times were good. Unfortunately, the later remedial actions are rarely taken and the service to the public is normally reduced permanently. The senior Council Officers are usually blamed for this and they do have some responsibility for the damage. However, they are not directly answerable to the public and they are able to ignore low-level discontent.

This immunity is not extended to Council Members. They are elected to serve the best interests of their ward residents and, although some of them would like to, they cannot avoid being held to account. In London the time for this has arrived. Local elections are due at the beginning of May.

The last set of London local elections occurred in May 2006. So, it would be quite interesting to compare the performance of Londons public libraries just before those elections with the latest available data (2007/08). The Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy publishes an invaluable set of library statistics each year and the table below has been derived from these.

The general trend of the performance of Londons public libraries in the recent past has been downwards. However, there are a few exceptions which indicates that, if a Council is committed to providing a good service, it is possible to produce improvements. Apologists for failing library services cannot claim that all Londons library services are performing in a similar way.

It can be argued that the present crop of Councillors are not entirely responsible for the poor performance trends of Londons public libraries, as these are the result of many years of neglect. Of course, this excuse does not hold for those that have been long term Councillors. Even relatively new Councillors need to set out what they have done to improve matters. The above data suggests that very few of them will be able to make a convincing case in this respect. The fact is that public libraries are not politically sexy and, consequently, they are of little interest to most Council Members or hopeful prospective Members.

When a local Camden newspaper asked the members of the boroughs Culture Scrutiny Committee about their use of its public libraries, these guardians of the service were unable to show that they had any significant contact with them in real life. Council Officers are able to obtain agreement to policies which are against the public interest because Council Members do not understand the issues and, often, do not care about them anyway.

It may be a little unreasonable to expect that all prospective Councillors should be passionately committed to the support of public library services. However, it is quite reasonable to expect that they do not act against the public interest. For this to happen they have to understand the issues and, under no circumstance, should they act as unthinking rubberstamps.

So, existing Councillors asking you to vote for them again should be quizzed on their record and, together with the newcomers, they should be very closely questioned on their intentions with respect to the boroughs library service. This will generate a flood of waffle and you will be able to judge the candidates suitability by how many nuggets of real information are contained in it.

Has the candidate any clue as to the relative importance of the library budget in the overall borough spend? London boroughs have a library revenue budget (the expenditure necessary to keep the service running) of £7m - £10m per year. This is a tiny fraction of the borough total and whatever is decided with respect to it would make very little difference to the total.

Has the candidate a grasp of how this small amount of money is actually spent? The approximate breakdown for the London boroughs is:

It is clear from the breakdown that any significant saving can only be obtained by making people redundant and that is why Councils find library closure programs so attractive. If a library is closed, not only is the running cost of the building and its stock removed from the budget, but it is far easier to make staff members redundant. Even better, the library site can be sold to developers.

The problem with this strategy is that it targets the junior members of staff, not the high earners. The private sector has long experience of redundancy programs. For instance, British industry shed 100,000 jobs per year for decades. The public sector has been relatively immune from large-scale shrinkage for very many years and it needs to learn from the private sector. There, it is generally accepted that a redundancy program has to start at the top. One Service Director costs the Council more than ten junior staff members. Why make ten people redundant, when it is possible to obtain the same financial result by making one redundant?

In reality, both senior and junior staff members will probably have to go in order to balance the books. The methods which are used to achieve this must be seen to be fair. No group of employees should be considered untouchable however close they are to the political power in the borough. Openness is the only way that this can be ensured. Most borough administrations hate the idea but loudly (falsely) proclaim their adherence to it. The effort needs to be made to show that staff members are being treated in an even-handed way, no matter how inconvenient this may be.

Perhaps the most revealing question for prospective Councillors is: How much are you going to sacrifice to help alleviate the financial problem? Council Members are paid by the borough and it is quite unfair for them to expect to make other Council employees suffer without sharing the suffering themselves. There is a need for Councillors to lead by example an actual cut in their income is required.

There are going to be cuts to the library services in London. Whilst all public library users would wish it to be otherwise, there is no escape from this fact. So, at what stage should the users say not beyond this point?

There are two major areas which are of concern for the sustainability of each boroughs service. The most important of these is the number of libraries.

A library which is closed is never reopened. Count on it. Whatever is promised, it will never open its doors again as a fully-fledged public library.

Frequently, the closure of a library removes the last tangible Council presence in a community. The local community becomes more isolated from the Town Hall and democracy is reduced.

The closure of a library is a direct blow against the more deprived members of society the infirm, the old, the unemployed and mothers with small children i.e. those that have difficulty travelling. The cult of the grand central library, so enthusiastically promoted by professional librarians and politicians, has always sought to gloss over this awkward fact. Nevertheless, it does exist and proposals to further deprive those who are already disadvantaged should be vigorously resisted.

The second area of concern during a cost cutting program is the book fund. Universally, his has been under severe pressure for many years and is the principle causal suspect for the general underperformance of Britains public libraries. Why go to your local library when you are unlikely to find anything there that you want?

In many boroughs, the book stock is now a small fraction of its size twenty years ago. It has reached a size where it is no longer feasible to lower the book shelves any more or push them further apart. If this general policy was accelerated, it would save a tiny amount of money in each borough, but it would increase the downward performance trend. This increasing underperformance would be taken as an indication of there being a lack of interest in library provision and a reason for libraries to close. Thus, more de-stocking will inevitably lead to library closures, sooner or later. A stand will need to be made to stop this rot at the core of most library services.

Given that the long-term viability of many of Londons library services may well be damaged by irresponsible responses to the coming funding crisis, are there any actions that library users can take to mitigate the damage? Perhaps the most important option available to users is to join the local library Friends Group. Many of these were originally set-up to oppose past library closure programs and they will do so again, should the need arise. If there is no Friends Group for your library, have a chat with the staff about setting-up one. The time has long passed when library staff members were suspicious of these groups. It is now widely recognised that the staff and users have many common interests and help is usually gladly provided

For those library users who are particularly concerned about the overall public library provision in a borough, there are some users groups at this level. The best way to these is via the local library group or via the London region group, Libraries for Life for Londoners (website: www.librarylondon.org ). The national group is The Library Campaign and it holds many of its meetings in London.

Finally, beware of national politicians offering simplistic solutions. These people move on very quickly and have no real interest in the long term. Margaret Hodge (the Minister for Culture, Creative Industries & Tourism within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) is reviewing the nations library services and is due to make her recommendations soon. It is rumoured that she will heavily promote the use of volunteers in public libraries. This is the norm in many countries, but has never been widely used in the UK. The volunteer option is not an impossible one but, in this country, it is quite a difficult one. If it works at all, it will take decades to make a significant impact on the way Britains public libraries are managed. A great deal of damage can be done in that time.

AT March 2010