Of all the cuts brought about by the coalition government over the last few months, two have provoked particular public anger. The proposed closure of libraries by local government after having their grant funding slashed and the policy of selling off our forests, which was toppled last week following an embarrassing u-turn. Unfortunately the first proposal remains standing (for the moment at least).

Selling off forests was a national policy, hurriedly tabled by Caroline Spelman and her DEFRA team before it was just as quickly shelved by the prime minister. It’s difficult to understand how the government failed to see that controversy coming. The position is different with libraries, responsibility for which sits with local authorities. The political calculation of the coalition government was, presumably, that ministers could shrug their shoulders, disclaim responsibility, and point the finger at local government for library closures. Labour-controlled local authorities (who appear to have suffered a bigger assault on their spending power than their Conservative and Lib Dem counterparts) would be in a particularly difficult position. Conservative and Liberal Democrat councils could take the opportunity to cut back the state, and those particularly eager to please could substitute the “Big Society” in place of local authority owned and managed library services. What could go wrong?

In Oxfordshire, the Conservative-controlled County Council put forward proposals to close 20 of its 43 public libraries last November, naming every single library above whose roof the axe was hanging. Blackbird Leys, in the division of the Council I represent, is a large housing estate and one of the most disadvantaged parts of the county. On measures of educational deprivation, Blackbird Leys falls within the bottom 10 percent most deprived areas in the whole of England. And yet it is to lose its public library. As the Independent on Sunday pointed out in a recent special report, the proposed closure of Blackbird Leys library illustrates a wider point about library cuts: they look set to affect deprived areas disproportionately.

But proposals for library closures run up against particularly thorny legal issues, and it may be that the implications have not been properly understood, locally or nationally. The statutory basis of local authority library provision is the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. Section 7 says that, “It shall be the duty of every library authority to provide a comprehensive and efficient Library Service for all persons desiring to make use thereof…”

Culture minister (and Oxfordshire MP) Ed Vaizey has placed the emphasis on an “efficient” rather than a “comprehensive” library service in a letter to author and campaigner Alan Gibbons: “When the funding available decreases it is inevitable that to stay efficient authorities will need to make changes to their library service,” he wrote. This is a telling interpretation, equating as it does “efficiency” with “cost”. It is also, I think, wrong. Read in the context of the 1964 Act as a whole, “efficient” arguably refers not simply to the cost of the service, but to the usefulness and ease of accessing the resources of a library.

A better guide to what is meant by “comprehensive and efficient” local authority library services is the report of the 2009 independent local inquiry (held under provisions in the 1964 Act) into Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council’s proposal to rationalise its library services. It would be wrong to make judgments about that particular authority’s proposals, and every authority must conduct its own analysis of its particular circumstances. But the Wirral Report (which is not legally binding) is valuable because it sets out some key principles that local authorities should consider when meeting their statutory obligation to provide a comprehensive and efficient public library service.

Two points emerge strongly from the Wirral Report. The first is that there should be an “assessment of local needs” before a decision to withdraw services is made. In Oxfordshire, the County Council is now trying to start a consultation on its proposals. But the outcome has already been pre-judged by naming the 20 individual libraries from which funding would be cut in its first press release on the subject, months before completing the assessment of local needs.

The second point is a progressive one. One of the inquiry inspector’s key findings was that in reaching a conclusion about what constituted a comprehensive and efficient library service, the council had to address the general requirements of children, and specific needs for adults – including “specific requirements for older people, disabled people, unemployed people, and those living in deprived areas”. The Report went on to conclude that there was “a strong case… for retaining a physical service” in certain places, including where a library is located in an area of significant deprivation.

This has obvious implications for Blackbird Leys library and others like it across the country. It will be interesting to see how, in legal terms, local authorities like Oxfordshire County Council deal with this point when assessments of local need are properly made.

The message for local authorities is clear: councils will need to proceed with care if they are to meet their statutory obligations. But the 1964 Act also has implications for the coalition government. Section 1 puts a specific statutory duty on the secretary of state (for Culture Media & Sport – currently Jeremy Hunt) to “superintend, and promote the improvement of, the public library service provided by local authorities in England and Wales, and to secure the proper discharge by local authorities of the functions in relation to libraries conferred on them”. It also contains wide powers for the secretary of state to set up public inquiries to look at decisions of library authorities (which is how the Wirral Report came into being).

Library provision across the country – and notably in deprived areas – now appears to be at serious risk of being dismantled on a piecemeal basis. There is a strong case for the coalition government doing another u-turn and holding a national inquiry into public library provision before it’s too late. If the coalition’s excessively deep and front-loaded funding cuts cause widespread library closures, there will be questions to ask not only about whether certain local authorities will be providing “comprehensive and efficient” services, but also about whether the government’s duty to superintend and promote the improvement of our public library services has been properly fulfilled.

Photo:Yersinia