The Herne Hill Forum are hosting a hustings for Herne Hill (Lambeth) & Village (Southwark) wards, at 7pm on the 17th April, at Herne Hill Baptist Church (Winterbrook St).
Library campaigners will be requesting that the Herne Hill candidates sign the Defend the 10 libraries pledge. So far the Green, Lib Dem and independent candidates have signed.
Three important upcoming events for library supporters:
The Friends are working as community partner with Lambeth Archives on a project to restore the memorials formerly in Carnegie Library basement. Having discovered them there many years ago, we felt it was a shame to leave them on the floor gathering dust. Liaising with Herne Hill Society, we met with one of the Lambeth Archives managers in 2009 to list and photograph them, with the idea of cataloguing them and trying to learn their provenance. When the library was closed and preparations being made to excavate the basement and clear out the building, we expressed concern that the memorials needed to be carefully moved to a place of safety and their future ensured. They are in Brixton Library basement for now.
The 24 memorials range from brass plaques to alabaster marble and other stone monuments; two came from schools, others are from the Boer War, WW1, WW2 and also to individual vicars or parishioners, etc. A book on St Saviour's Herne Hill (then in the local history section of the library) confirmed that the alabaster WW1 memorial in two sections had been in that church (including a middle section with St George, now missing), as was one to a woman parishioner, Harriot Nicholson who died in 1918. Preliminary sessions have taken place in St Saviour's School (built on the site of the church), including Year 6 learning about Harriot and her family.
St Saviour’s Church was demolished in 1981, the same year the library and the parish hall were listed Grade 2. Its memorials were taken down and stored in the library undercroft alongside plaques from All Saints Church, South Lambeth and elsewhere. We are working with Lambeth Archives staff to secure funding to restore all the memorials. Conservation specialists Taylor Pearce have given advice and City & Guilds of London Art School are interested; the War Memorials Trust may be able to offer match funding.
The restoration project includes workshops about conservation, research, and community memory. At the end of the project it is hoped that the fully-restored memorials will go on display.
Detailed condition reports from architects and surveyors have confirmed that the library building:
Specifically, the architects and surveyors advised that the roof gutters must be cleared of leaves twice a year to prevent the gutters overflowing and discharging rainwater into the front rooms of the building.
Clearing the gutters is a simple matter of accessing the roof from inside the building through a trap door and then walking along behind the parapet walls collecting the leaves.
For years Lambeth's property management failed to clear the gutters until water came in and eventually spent a six figure sum on repairs to plaster mouldings damaged by the water. After the repairs Lambeth still omitted to clear the gutters.
Shortly before the Council's cultural services were due to be inspected by the Audit Commission the Friends complained to the Commission about this and other matters. A one-year contract to clear the gutters quarterly was put in place before the Commission's inspection team arrived. At the end of the year it lapsed and water came in again. Lambeth insisted that the contract could not be renewed because "no paper trail" existed for setting it up in the first place.
In response to further complaints Lambeth responded that library staff must wait for the gutters to overflow before the gutters could be cleared because Lambeth did not have a budget for "preventive maintenance" of library buildings but only a budget for "reactive maintenance."
Eventually the library service gave up hope of getting any sense out of the property managers and themselves arranged for the gutters to be cleared twice a year. There was then no further ingress of water for a few years until Lambeth closed the Library in March 2016 and handed control of the building to its property managers. The gutters were due to be cleared the next month but this was not done and more water came in. The necessary routine clearing was still not arranged. The front rooms are currently too damp to occupy. The plaster work is in a disgusting state and will no doubt require more very expensive repairs. The following photograph was taken in April last year. The damage will no doubt be far worse by now.
Lambeth have saved hundreds of pounds by omitting to clear the gutters and then spent tens of thousands of pounds repairing the damage which they knew would inevitably result. In due course they will no doubt argue that the building has to be sold because its maintenance costs are so high. To add to the cost Lambeth have had their contractors put up scaffolding twice for no reason, damage and then replace roof slates and done completely unnecessary work to the roof. Details are here.
A leaflet about the library and proposed events in Brockwell Park has been produced and distributed by some local residents and library supporters.
This was not produced by the Friends, and some of the information contained in the leaflet is incomplete. Here are corrections:
| The information in the leaflet | Correction |
| Staff from the gym operator, GLL, will supervise the library. | The library will not be effectively supervised except when library staff are present. We are told this will be about two hours a day. |
| The library will be open when library staff are not present. | This is only a temporary arrangement which we expect to end two months after the Council Elections. |
| Carnegie Community Trust has three active members. | There were five members, that is, trustees and there does not appear to have been any change of substance. The two members who are most obviously Labour activists connected to Lambeth have resigned as trustees but continue as volunteers. |
| There is no evidence that the gym will make a profit or contribute funding to the library. | All the evidence indicates that the gym will always need subsidising. |
| GLL will not pay rent until 2023 | There are no grounds for expecting the gym to last until 2023. |
We sent a summary of the arrangements for Carnegie Library to Cllr Sonia Winifred, who is Lambeth's Cabinet Member responsible for libraries, and copied in the senior Herne Hill councillor, Jim Dickson. We asked her to come back to us if anything in it needed correction. A month has elapsed without any response and we therefore infer that the summary is accurate in all respects. A copy is here.
Contrary to what Lambeth say:
Although the reduction in library opening hours would save about £125,000 a year in staff costs, Lambeth appear to be providing about the same amount to their Carnegie Community Trust to run the main room as a Church hall type of facility instead of the previous flexible use as a library and hall. So there would not be any saving overall.
The disclosed estimates of the capital costs of the building works total £3 million. Final costs of Lambeth projects always seem to be a multiple of the original estimates. We should therefore expect the final cost of the works to be at least £5 million. Lambeth are currently borrowing at 4.7% per annum. Assuming a generous 20 years for repayment the financing costs come out at £400,000 a year. The basement is not deep enough for a gym and there are many cheaper gyms offering more facilities in locations more convenient for almost anyone who wants a gym. It would be hopelessly unrealistic to expect the gym to attract enough custom to cover its running costs, let alone generate an additional £400,000 a year to cover the financing costs.
One view is that Councillors are just indulging themselves at the People's expense in the standard Lambeth nonsense of always having money for pet projects but not for services to the public. For example, Lambeth are simultaneously:
However, there is a more sinister aspect to the current and proposed building work to the library in that all of it is more consistent with Lambeth's previously announced plan to sell the library for redevelopment than with providing a gym in the basement or restricting the use of the ground floor. The details are here.