Open Letter to Mark Sesnan, Managing Director of GLL 1st June 2017 Dear Mark Sesnan Please withdraw from the disastrous scheme to downgrade the Carnegie library and install a GLL/Better gym. There is still time. Negotiations are dragging on. The project is many months behind schedule. It is clearly in chaos. The Carnegie library was […]
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Letters to Helen Hayes
4 May, 2017 Dear Helen, Thank you for requesting via Twitter that we get in touch with you on email. I will not rehash the entire sordid history of how Lambeth Council have forced through a deal with GLL and a gym in the Carnegie Library at Herne Hill, but I will summarize the key […]
Dear Lib Peck
Dear Lib Peck, Leader Lambeth Council In Lambeth, as you will know, we have been fighting for our library service. In the last year, under your administration we have seen two libraries lose their staffing and two more closed completely. You have said it’s necessary because of Tory austerity and government cuts in local council […]
Chaos at Carnegie
Almost 14 months since Carnegie and Minet libraries were pointlessly closed… what’s happening? Well, local people are never told anything, but here’s some pointers… 1. PLANS STILL IN CHAOS At the end of April the council press office told a Freedom of Information query about the libraries: “Specific agreements relating to particular local arrangements and […]
Libraries and Section 106 – Where’s the money?
Here, Ben Rymer, who sits on the committee of the Friends of Tate South Lambeth library, highlights the issue of regeneration and frequent failure of London Councils to support libraries with funds from developers. This issue affects Lambeth’s libraries and those of many other London boroughs. Recent analysis of London’s booming property industry contains a […]
First Anniversary of the Carnegie Occupation
250 local people turned out on April Fool’s Day to ridicule the crazy closure of the Carnegie Library in Herne Hill. Banners and fancy dress made the point. Speakers included comedian Jeremy Hardy and authors Stella Duffy OBE,Toby Litt and Barbara Ellis. But the loudest applause was for Rachel Heywood, the sole Labour councillor (out of Lambeth’s huge majority of […]
Lambeth Peoples Audit: the real story of our libraries
The People’s Audit team of volunteers in Lambeth have been working for many months to piece together what has really been going on at Lambeth Council and the background to its unpopular decisions. Read the recently released people’s audit chapter on libraries here: Download Lambeth peoples Audit libraries chapter Laura Swaffield from Friends of Lambeth […]
Campaign address to the Council meeting, 22nd Feb.
Lambeth Libraries Campaigner Laura Swaffield addressed the Full Council meeting with the following speech…… The very first speech we made to councillors emphasised that we realised this council had to make cuts. That’s why we were puzzled that the council wanted to waste millions on installing gyms that nobody needed – certainly not the […]
Cllr Scott Ainslie speaks to the Full Council budget meeting – demanding scrutiny and cuts to wasteful expenditure before vital services.
In his official response [to the council budget] Councillor Ainslie questioned the budget’s compatibility with the stated aims of the council’s Borough Plan to reduce inequality, achieve sustainable growth and create strong, sustainable neighbourhoods. Local people, he said, are being priced out of their homes and businesses, while local estates are being starved of repairs “to prop up a risky […]
Planning permission granted for GLL to turn Carnegie library into a gym!
Despite more than 300 objections from local people an library users, the council’s planning applications committee gave the go ahead to GLL to turn the much loved and needed library into an unwanted gym with an unstaffed ‘library’. So…our campaign against the council’s scandalously expensive and library destroying plans continues…. Next […]