Decision details

33.1     The Lead Member considered a report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport.

DECISIONS

33.2     The Lead Member RESOLVED to (1) Note the significant progress made in delivering and implementing new services including the new children and young people’s offer to support literacy and numeracy, an enhanced modern eLibrary, and increased outreach work in our most disadvantaged communities.

(2)        Note that following the extensive review and update of the evidence base, including the Needs Assessment (Appendix 4 of the report) and Accessibility Analysis (Appendix 5 of the report) the current Vision and 4 Strategic Outcomes remain relevant and correct for the medium-term focus for the Library and Information Service and so remain unchanged. In addition, this assessment has concluded that we should maintain our network of 17 public library buildings, which have around 1 million visits annually as well as continuing to host partners and their service offers.

(3)        Agree the Updated Libraries Strategic Commissioning Strategy 2022/23 to 2027/2028 and implementation to ensure the Library and Information Service continues to support residents’ needs.

(4)        Agree the implementation of additional services to address the identified emerging needs, including the extension of homework and code clubs for children, the development of our Step into Reading service to help adults improve their reading and new services to help young people into employment including Job Pods. In addition, enhance access further to the Library and Information Service through removing reservations fees so that people can reserve books from across the whole catalogue and collect them at their local library, making the entire lending stock freely available to all residents (para.2.37 of the report).

Reasons

33.3     The report and accompanying appendices describe in detail the excellent progress made to deliver the Libraries Strategic Commissioning Strategy 2018-2023.  The offers outlined in the Libraries Strategic Commissioning Strategy 2022/23 to 2027/28 have been developed following a comprehensive review of the data.  The Strategic Outcomes allow for some flexibility in developing offers which will meet the challenges that the community will face going forward, in this period of Covid-19 recovery.