I've seen the future; David Ruse and the Tri-borough experiment!

"I’ve seen the future, I’ve seen the future, I’ve seen the future.
It’s a cold and empty place,
It’s a mind without a face."
More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmania.com/ive_seen_the_future_lyrics_disco_ensemble.html
All about Disco Ensemble: http://www.musictory.com/music/Disco+Ensemble

 

On Tuesday night I attended a talk hosted by those nice folks at CILIP London, who by the way put on a very good show, entitled 'Merging library authorities: challenges and opportunities' given by David Ruse, Tri-borough Director of Libraries and Archives.

David has worked for Westminster for 20+ years and took over the his present role of managing the Library and Archive services of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea 3 years ago.

I won't go into the mechanics of the Tri-borough experiment, more detail can be found at:

http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/councilgovernmentanddemocracy/tri-borough-working/

http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/libraries/news/triborough/
 

The audience was a mixed bunch that included young trainee librarians looking for CPD accreditation, retired librarians, senior managers from Harrow, Ealing, Bromley and Bexley (I wonder why?) and a couple of campaigners.
 

David started his talk by telling us that without the move to the Tri-borough model there would have been“huge redundancies and closures”, that it was “a fantastic opportunity to re-position libraries” and that he was responsible for a budget of £16m, 360FTE staff and 21 sites. He then went on to say that 10 senior management posts had been cut to 4, the stock team had been reduced and that there was only 1 children’s specialist in the service and this 'delayering' means that there are only 5 strata of management between a library assistant and himself.

Someone asked him how many professional staff were now in the system but he couldn't give a figure but strangely he knew that they had between 300-400 volunteers"not substituting but assisting" who worked 15,000 hrs last year!

One very interesting point is that paid staff are shared between the boroughs under Section 113 of the Local Government Act 1972, David said that they had looked at TUPEing staff over to Westminster, the lead borough, and ‘salary harmonisation’ but use Section 113 instead. All this had led to savings of £1.237m.

 

He was also asked about redundancies and said that 30 FTE staff had“been let go” and only 1 of them was compulsory, he said that self-serve had led to staff cuts, finally a senior manager who will openly admit this, but“without any detrimental effect on the service”.

He then launched into neoliberal overdrive with talk of“our product is still the same”, “great opportunity to re-position libraries”,“knowing your baseline” and a new one on me “knowledge capture”. If he had been a time share salesman I would at this point quite happily have signed up for a year’s worth.
 

He then talked about staff motivation and how they had been consulted and“engaged” at every point of process, “lots of consultation and meetings”, that“staff feedback was important” and that the unions had had “strong involvement” in the process and“no disputes”. I then raised the matter of the open letter published recently by the staff at Westminster Libraries which challenged his rosy view of the experiment, he said“I can’t explain the letter”, “it wasn’t from all the staff but from a few over-enthusiastic individuals” and that the“facts stated in the letter were wrong” but he did say that the last staff survey showed a drop in motivation and morale but“it’s going up again”, so a slightly contradictory answer.

Also from the feedback I've had his rosy view doesn't represent that on the front line, like every where else the Tri-borough authorities are running their services at, or below, minimum staffing levels, with fewer professional staff, low morale/motivation and less resources, and this, from what I've heard, hasn't improved because of Tri-borough it's got worse. Keeping the library doors open is one thing, the old "we're not closing libraries" smokescreen, but properly staffing and resourcing them is another.
 

He then mentioned the LLCP in relation to whether we could “afford to have 33 individual boroughs running 33 library services” and that discussions had taken place between himself, others and City Hall but“I’m not pitching for power, well not yet anyway".
 

So what about the future? He said that more savings would have to be made but he couldn’t discuss the details as he“hadn’t discussed them with his staff yet” but he did say that they would be looking at saving money by employing "sharper procurement" practises.
 

I came away from it feeling very depressed and deflated, I don’t share his vision of retail/market led library services that grow bigger and bigger and thus further removed from local communities, my vision is of a national branch network of local libraries that operate on a mandate based on ‘social equity’, empowerment, real community involvement (not 'community libraries') and public sector ethos? Time to re-train as a plumber i think!

David Ruse responds to the concerns of his staff.

 

This is the response by David Ruse to the open letter written by the staff of Westminster Libraries asking their Councillors not to impose further cuts to the service

 

 

The claim that Westminster City Council is planning the wholesale decimation of its library service is straight off our fiction shelves. I can state now that there will be no library closures and no cuts to opening hours and no reason to think that the excellent range of services described will be reduced.

Like all local authorities the Council is faced with tough financial challenges, and that includes the library service. But our innovative partnership with Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham has allowed us to make significant savings and so protect front line library services. We are also about to invest £12 million in a new library for Marylebone.

The Council knows how much local people value libraries and is committed to a first class service.

David Ruse

Tri-borough Director of Libraries and Archives

London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Westminster City Council

 

 

 

Isn't it about time that those who climbed the ladder and have subsequently pulled it up showed some professional pride and spoke out against the destruction and 'hollowing out' of the service they once helped to build instead of overseeing it and openly mocking their staff?

Open letter from the staff of Westminster Libraries to their local councillors.

The following is an open letter from the staff of Westminster Libraries to their local councillors.

To the Councillors of Westminster,
Westminster Libraries currently uses less than 1% of the council’s overall budget. We have 11 libraries, an archives service, a reference library, a music library, a home library service and the largest online database for any public library service in the UK. We provide books, DVDs & CDs, Internet access, CV building workshops, Under 5s sessions, class visits, language and computer courses, community groups and workshops and engage teenagers through projects like Fast Forward which has taken over from the connexions career Services: We promote health, community and citizenship and provide a free space to work, socialise and study for residents and visitors.
We now have Parking, Council tax, Rescard, Housing and OneStop services incorporated into our day-to-day duties with no additional funding as a service or as employees; In fact we’ve provided all these services at this low cost whilst going through 5 years of cuts that has already closed libraries, reduced our budget and decimated our staff levels each and every year.
When employment goes down, our workload goes up, and as homelessness increases and incomes plummet, our footfall increases. Year-on-year we’ve risen to the challenge of providing all these services for that ever shrinking less than 1% of the council’s budget.
In 2011, Westminster Council hired two new department directors at the rate it cost to run St James’s library which they were closing at the same time.
In that same year, Westminster councillors refused a 5% reduction to wages above £100,000 to save £3.5 million because the saving would be too insignificant to justify; but library staff have been asked to bear double that cut for only 10% of that saving.
The solution to unemployment cannot be to fire people, and the solution to debt is not to cut income generating, job creating, and crime preventing services.
Not only is it a statutory requirement to provide this service, it is our moral obligation to do so. With new challenges, we need new ideas, not old mistakes and any further cuts to our library service budget would be a drop in the ocean compared to almost any other department in a council that has often stood in the spotlight on the international stage.
We ask that this race to the bottom is brought to an end; and that Westminster council commits to investment rather than cuts so we can continue the good work that we do for the small budget we have.
The Staff of Westminster Libraries

Take it from me this took a lot of courage and nerve even though it was posted by a Unison Steward, Library staff (and Stewards) up and down the country are under the cosh, employees threatened with punitive action if they speak out against their employers and Stewards having to fight for facility time and the right to represent members, but this shows that it can be done and that there is still power in a Union!

see also http://defendwestminsterlibraries.blogspot.co.uk/