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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you Deputy Mayor. It's been a long and hard journey to get here, almost a year.
00:12We've had to climb over too many unnecessary and unjust hurdles along the way, including
00:18the rejection of this very petition twice on false grounds, even though it met the council's
00:25own criteria. Finally, we are here, representing the community of Woodston, Fletton, Neen Valley
00:32and Hempstead. You have no choice but to listen to our collective voices tonight, but we hope
00:39and pray you will also hear us. We directly ask the council to take Woodston Library off
00:46the assets disposal list, increase the opening hours and work with the Friends of Woodston
00:51Library and our community so we can embrace, enhance and rejuvenate this much-loved library,
00:59which the council has neglected, under-promoted and made inaccessible for far too long. The
01:06review is flawed. We have experienced seven months of active non-engagement from the council.
01:14Continued refusal to provide basic information has meant our only redress has been to submit
01:19complaints and FOIs, and today it seems you are pumping out false statements to the media.
01:26None of this meets the council's pledge to be transparent, collaborative, inclusive,
01:33respectful and innovative. You have even confirmed you offered our library to other organisations
01:39before the review had completed and ahead of the legal three-month consultation process,
01:46which would have tainted the outcome of any consultation. You have stated you can't afford
01:51to keep the library open. We say you can't afford to close it. Can we agree a new chapter
01:58together? The Friends Group can support our council and library and our community with
02:03time, enthusiasm, passion and gain external funding to ensure our library prospers. We
02:10can bring culture and creative events to Woodstone Library to enrich local lives, so
02:15important in a deprived area such as ours. We can give support to increase reading and
02:20literacy, critical in a city with one of the lowest literacy rates in the UK. We can give
02:27support to create healthier and happier lives. We have much social isolation in our community.
02:35The library was bequeathed to local people by a former alderman and mayor of the city in 1950.
02:50You were charged with the privilege of being its custodians. Please protect his legacy.
02:56Surely his principles, if not his politics, are worthy of your support. It could be your
03:02legacy up for debate one day. Thank you.
03:06Thank you. You have two minutes, former Councillor Coles. Thank you.
03:10Thank you, Mr Deputy Mayor. Dear members, I was sincerely hoping that this evening would
03:14be a pleasure, a pleasure to speak in familiar surroundings in support of our city and of
03:19saving our community library in Woodstone. I was looking forward to thanking the leader,
03:24our former and current MPs for Woodstone and our current ward councillors for enabling
03:29the Friends to set up a project to turn the library around. I was looking forward to
03:33our 13 volunteers being able to support the employed staff in increasing the hours the
03:37library is open and bringing many activities to the area. I was also pleased to say that
03:42all of this would be largely self-funded, i.e. cost neutral to the council. I was hoping
03:47to say all that tonight but unfortunately I can't. At our last meeting with officers
03:52we thought we had agreement to most of our proposals and had been promised a couple of
03:56months for the library service to approve and train up our volunteers and over the next
03:59year for us to run a whole range of events to prove that the library should be retained
04:04by the council. We had a brief discussion about a lease but let's be clear, we didn't
04:09agree to it at that point. We now find out from the press today that we have agreed to
04:13sign a lease on the property. Well, that's news to us. Councillors, just think how you
04:18might feel if you were presented with a suggested lease that you hadn't asked for which makes
04:22you liable for all costs for the building, potentially even staff costs. Let's be clear,
04:28our petition is supported by local residents who want us to be successful in saving the
04:32library. We want to work with the council but this is to come from a position of respect
04:37and genuine willingness to work together to achieve this. We offered a clean slate and
04:42we now would like to see that come forward. Thank you very much Mr Deputy Mayor.
04:47Thank you very much, 20 seconds only. Now then, Councillor Jamil is the cabinet member.
04:53If you don't mind the interruption. So three minutes, we'll start when you start speaking.
05:04I think it's quite disappointing that so many people in our community have come together
05:11and sort of put me here today and mainly what you're talking about is dumping the library
05:19on residents when we've tried to work with you for nearly a year. A lease has never been
05:28on the agenda, it's something that was muted, it was not what we're here for, it's not what
05:34your constituents, the people who have elected you are asking for. All we've been wanting
05:42to do is to talk with the council for nearly a year. We've had misinformation, mis-engagement
05:48and you just want to give us a library without actually looking at what that would be. If
05:55a survey, you've carried out a building survey and it needed £50,000 spent on it, where
06:02are you going to get that money for? Because we certainly wouldn't even consider a lease
06:06without it being 100% working order and sorry to correct you with your eloquent speech but
06:12it's actually been valued at £100,000 to £120,000, just so you know. So we really
06:19are talking small money but I mean Andy can talk to you about thousands of pounds worth
06:24of funding, he's hoping to secure it imminently but it's on the terms of a council-led library
06:31of which we will support. We are not a library, we are people, we want to support our library,
06:38we want to support librarians. Let's not devalue the role of a librarian. Thank you.
06:47Thank you Mr Deputy Mayor for the chance to reply and thank you very much to those councillors
06:51who have supported us in terms of bringing this library to fruition. I completely understand
06:56where Councillor Jamil is coming from, that the potential option is for a lease but we
07:00have to be clear about that, there are some very big questions we have to have answered.
07:04Why would we lease a library when it's a statutory service that's provided for by the council?
07:09How much money are we going to have to find to make sure we can run it? We have £200
07:14in the bank account at the moment, that's not really enough even to pay the electricity
07:17bill. We've been sprung this idea of a solution without adequate discussion. I have to say
07:22I'm very grateful to the communities team who listened the first time they listened,
07:27they worked with us, they understood the issues that we had and were prepared to work
07:30with us. Unfortunately their position has been somewhat undermined with this idea that
07:34we can only operate under a lease. What we are asking is that we give the opportunity
07:39to the people who are involved in the Friends Group to form and to do what they can do to
07:45save the library but to suddenly say you have to also find all this money that we don't
07:49currently have and to turn it into some sort of fight for a lease is a surprise to us.
07:56We weren't ready for that, the community weren't aware of that, we have to go back to our members
08:00to discuss it. So while I understand the solution and where it's coming from, that's not really
08:05where we were starting from and that's not what we understood from our meeting with the
08:08communities group. But thank you very much for listening and thank you very much Mr Deputy Mayor.