Beddington Library and the Mobile Library service will close as part of a restructure forced by unprecedented government cuts to local authority funding.

However, the savings mean that Sutton Council can keep its other libraries open, increase total opening hours and develop the Housebound Library service to serve vulnerable residents who were using the Mobile Library service. The council will also make more use of volunteers and community groups in order to save money, and will not outsource the library service.

The changes are being made because the council has to save £31m from its annual budget by 2019 because of unprecedented Government cuts to funding and increased pressure on services.

The council has already saved £43m from its annual budget since 2010. Its annual budget currently stands at £148.4m.

To contribute to the savings, the Library, Heritage and Arts Service has to save £1m from its annual budget by 2019.

Facing having to rationalise the service, Sutton Council ran an extensive three-month consultation through its Sutton’s Future campaign to see how savings could be made while trying to meet community needs.

Almost 3,000 people took part in two consultations. One was an online survey people could volunteer to answer and hence were mainly library users (95 per cent) and another was an independent telephone survey of 1,000 people called at random based on a representative sample of the borough – of which 58 per cent of people were library users.

Some of the key findings were:

• Sutton Central was the library used by most users of both surveys – 33 per cent of respondents to the telephone survey and 34 per cent of respondents to the online survey.
• Only one person in the telephone survey and only 2 per cent of respondents to the online survey said they used Beddington Library.
• Only 13 people in the telephone survey and 9 per cent of respondents to the online survey said they used the Mobile Library.
• 53 per cent of people in the telephone survey and 47 per cent of people in the online survey said they supported more community involvement and volunteering in libraries.
• 65 per cent of people in the online survey and 57 per cent of people in the telephone survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with outsourcing the library service.
• 32 per cent of respondents to the telephone survey said savings should be made from the library service, 53 per cent disagreed.

On Thursday 4 February the council’s Environment and Neighbourhoods Committee decided to:

• Close Beddington Library from 1 April 2016 saving £40,000 annually.
• Close the Mobile Library service from 1 April 2016 and develop the Housebound Library Service to ensure that services continue for vulnerable people. This would save £113,000.
• Rationalise library opening hours across the network of eight libraries – Sutton Central, Wallington, Cheam, Worcester Park, Middleton Circle, The Life Centre, Westcroft and Phoenix.
• Sutton Central Library will be open for 63.5 hours a week with all floors open all-day Monday and Thursday evening, and open on Sunday. Although this means losing one hour a week, residents’ access to the library will be enormously improved, and the children’s library and IT suite will have 13 extra hours a week.
• Make changes to Sunday service at Westcroft and the Life Centre from staffed to fully self-service libraries.
• Agree that the model of council-led services with community support is better than sharing the service with another borough or commissioning the service from another provider.

Cllr Steve Penneck, Lead Councillor for Libraries, Arts and Heritage at Sutton Council, said:

“I want to thank everyone who took part in our consultation. The Government cuts mean we have had to make some hard choices, but we have managed to keep the majority of libraries open at a time when many local authorities are making deeper cuts to their library service.

“We are also able to make changes that will improve the service, increasing access at Sutton Library and Circle Library, developing the housebound service for vulnerable people, and having greater involvement of volunteers and the community in running our libraries.”

• To see the full report from the Environment and Neighbourhoods Committee click here.