In Suffolk, a heated dispute over the future of the county’s libraries has drawn a tide of misinformation-mongering, mudslinging, and competing narratives.
On one side, there’s the Conservative-run Suffolk County Council (SCC) who’ve terminated the outsourced contract and plan to bring the service back in-house. Trade union Unison is backing the move and the Tory-led authority’s narrative against the provider currently running the service. Both Unison and campaign group the Library Campaign have set out how public libraries should be in public hands, ergo with the council.
On the other, there’s the not-for-profit Suffolk Libraries, who has been responsible for 45 libraries across the county since 2012. Backing the organisation to continue delivering the service is an eclectic mix of opposition party councillors, local Labour MPs, and residents. Notably, locals have sprung up in opposition to the council’s plans – launching protests, and a petition that’s now garnered more than 18,000 signatures.
Suffolk Libraries: Suffolk County Council moves to take service in-house
In February, Suffolk County Council (SCC) abruptly announced its plans to take the county’s library service back in-house.
SCC outsourced the library service in 2012, in a contract with charitable organisation Suffolk Libraries. The council funded the bulk of the service through this, with Suffolk Libraries fundraising and generating the rest. Originally, the contract was due to end after ten years, but due to the pandemic, SCC extended it up to May 2025.
So, for more than 12 years now, Suffolk Libraries has operated 45 libraries across the county. And in that time, it has run it without reducing the service – and largely, bar for an increase in 2024, done so without more council funding. The charitable organisation has also expanded the offering to local residents, with a community art programme, health and wellbeing services, and its prison library service to name but a few projects and areas.
In April 2024, SCC launched the procurement process, and Suffolk Libraries was the sole bidder. But, on 24 February, SCC informed Suffolk Libraries that it had lost the contract, with less than 15 minutes notice before it announced this to the council.
Instead, the council intends to bring the service back under its direct management. With this, it pledged no reduction in opening hours for library services, an investment of £200,000 for Suffolk’s mobile libraries, and a further £157,000 for new books and public computers.
Notably, the council has argued the case for doing so revolves around Suffolk’s Libraries’ plans to cut opening hours across its service by 30%. Moreover, it claimed that the charity was doing so without any consideration of cutting back-office costs to meet increasing expenses.
Meanwhile, Suffolk Libraries has countered this narrative. It has said that the cuts were in response to the fact SCC had stipulated that it had no extra money available to meet rising running costs.
More than 18,000 people sign petition opposing council decision
The council’s decision has sparked an outcry from local residents, who’ve organised protests against the move. One of the charity’s patrons – Lesley Dolphin – set up a petition urging for the council to reverse the decision.
Notably, the petition states how Suffolk Libraries has successfully run and extended the service across its 12 year history:
The charity has transformed our libraries into true community hubs offering a wide range of services, particularly relied on by families, children and some of the more vulnerable members of our community. Remarkably, the service now costs £3 million pounds less now than it did in 2011 whilst offering so much more to local people. All 45 libraries across Suffolk have stayed open with local Friends groups enhancing the offer representing real value for money. And independent research has shown that when managed by the charity, Suffolk’s libraries generate £41m worth of social value, translating to £6 social value for every £1 invested and saving NHS services in Suffolk an amazing £542K every year.
Now, more than 18,000 people have signed this.
Some supporting the charity to continue running the libraries have pointed out that it stepped in to save them during a time of deep Tory austerity on public services. This includes Labour MP for Suffolk Coastal Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, who raised it in the House of Commons debate, arguing that:
This is an appalling plan. Suffolk Libraries saved Suffolk from experiencing library closures under Tory austerity. They opened libraries and expanded the service when others across the country were closing down.
Fellow Labour MP for Ipswich Jack Abbott has also questioned the council’s “motives behind the decision”.
Crucially, it’s unclear what the future is for local services and staff.
The council has committed to keeping frontline staff jobs and keeping all services open. However, there’s sparse details on what this will look like. A letter SCC wrote to library staff and volunteers said only that the service would be in “very safe and protective hands”. In other words, SCC hasn’t been upfront on what current staff’s employment will look like in its hands. Keeping frontline roles is one thing, but this doesn’t automatically translate to the council maintaining those jobs under the equivalent or better terms.
SCC’s ‘motives behind the decision’?
What’s more, Suffolk Libraries and its supporters have raised the spectre of how potential incoming devolution could impact both services and jobs. An infographic the not-for-profit has publicised on this noted that:
SCC has made no assurances that post-devolution, all 45 libraries will stay open and no further jobs will be lost.
Echoing this, the petition states that:
Even more worryingly, it’s common knowledge that the Council might be swept away in a couple of years should devolution come in. How can we trust the Council with our libraries if they are prepared to risk their future against this backdrop?
The jobs the council isn’t promising to protect are at the centre of its argument for taking the library service back under its control. Cllr Philip Faircloth-Mutton is Conservative council portfolio holder responsible for overseeing the libraries service. He has detailed that the council’s claims that Suffolk Libraries was cutting opening hours while:
demanding ever more money without any consideration of back office or senior management cost savings
According to the council, its head office costs equate to “33% of annual staffing costs”. However, Suffolk Libraries has contested this.
What that 33% refers to is actually senior management wages as a percentage of its funds carried forward for 2024. In total, there are 15 ‘management’ positions. Moreover, the remuneration for ‘key management personnel’ together totalled £459,789. Chief executive Bruce Leeke earned £85,443 for the year, with more than £5,000 in pension contributions. Other than him, there are four senior managers taking home more than £50,000.
In theory, it’s these staff who face losing their jobs.
However, Suffolk Libraries has said that this percentage is misleading. Instead, it points to the percentage of its total staffing costs that senior positions make up. On this basis, it’s actually under 7.8% of the £5.93m it paid all 390 staff, including management, in 2024.
£85,433 is undoubtedly a lot of money – especially when Suffolk Libraries pays many of its workers minimum wage – for mostly part-time roles. However, it’s a far cry from the exorbitant sums that the CEOs of for-profit corporate providers have squeezed out of many privatised public services.
Trusting a Conservative council with public services – a recipe for disaster?
Nonetheless, there’s still a fair point in this too. Suffolk Libraries was going to scale back opening hours at its libraries. Invariably, what this would likely mean is that staff hours would be cut too. On this, Suffolk Libraries has said that:
The lack of more funding to cover annual increases in frontline costs meant that Suffolk Libraries had to reluctantly propose changes to opening hours across all libraries. This would be done as fairly as possible across the county whilst keeping all libraries open and maintaining services and activities.
In this context however, the council’s argument that the shortfall from increased costs should land on the broadest shoulders – senior management – is sound. It’s especially so when one of those increased costs is the rise in the minimum wage. After all, raising people’s wages, while cutting their hours, would rather defeat the point.
These are valid questions and concerns. However, there’s obviously equally concerns that SCC won’t fulfil their promise to retain these jobs post-devolution anyway. Plus, after over a decade of Tory council funding austerity, it’s questionable that SCC can afford to run it on its existing budget any more efficiently than Suffolk Libraries could. And certainly, it’s hard to imagine that it will do so without eating into its budgets for other vital services, like the still direly underfunded special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision.
Moreover, a Conservative-run authority known for cuts to other public sector jobs and services is hardly the pinnacle of trustworthiness – so it’s fair locals, MPs, and the charity are questioning its motives. Ironically, trade union Unison was fighting SCC’s £65m cuts to jobs and services in 2024. Now, it’s batting for Suffolk’s libraries to go “back where they belong”. Overall, it endorses SCC’s arguments, and rails against Suffolk Libraries as another case in outsourcing gone wrong.
Why fix what isn’t broken with Suffolk Libraries?
On the face of it, it seems like a battle between privatisation and public ownership. However, this belies the nuance in the Suffolk Libraries story. For one, while the contract is outsourced, it’s not to a private for-profit company.
Suffolk Libraries is a mutual society, with charitable status. There are also a number of non-profit member organisations comprised of local residents that support the 45 libraries, which:
have a say in the running and development of their local library. They support their local library with events and activities, fundraising initiatives, and raising the profile of the library in the local community.
And this is another sticking point in particular – SCC didn’t consult these groups in its decision either.
There is the case that charities and the public also shouldn’t have to fill in the gap for underfunded services. The government and local authorities should be fully funding them, and operating them in the public interest.
However, it’s not clear that this is what Suffolk’s library service will actually look like with SCC taking it back in-house. Moreover, Suffolk Libraries and its supporters have argued that it has run one of the most successful library services in the country.
The petition asks:
Why ‘rock the boat’ when the library service is already supporting our communities so well? Why fix what is not broken – and what is in fact being upheld as a shining example of libraries working at their best?
And clearly, more than 18,000 people agree.
Featured image via the Canary
