Department for Culture Media and Sport
statutory requirements
The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 requires the 149 first tier English local authorities to provide "comprehensive and efficient" public library services. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has a duty under the same Act to superintend the delivery of library services and to promote the improvement of public libraries.
The terms "comprehensive and efficient" are not defined within the 1964 Act. However, broadly speaking, the Act requires library authorities to provide free of charge, access for people who live, work or study in their area to borrow or refer to books, printed material and pictures in line with their needs and requirements.
The closure of one or even a small number of library branches does not necessarily signify a breach of the 1964 Act. Sometimes a library authority will close a library to ensure a better, more efficient service across its geographical area overall. DCMS will judge on the basis of overall provision. However, DCMS and its Ministers would be concerned where any closures stemmed from wholly financial considerations or where the library service appeared to be affected disproportionately by an authority's need to make savings.
To encourage better planning and accountability within services, from 1998 to 2002/03 DCMS commissioned the 149 library authorities to produce annual library plans. These were replaced by the first set of 26 public library standards in 2001.
The Standards helped to define a "comprehensive and efficient" service and were set at the level of the best 25% of libraries (as they were performing in 1999-00). Authorities were asked to meet the standards by the end of 2003-04. Few authorities met every standard by this time, but failure to meet one or more of them did not necessarily signify a breach of the 1964 Act. However, failure to comply with the standards did have an impact upon the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) of the local authority and therefore primed many improvements including longer opening hours in 75% of library authorities and increased acquisitions within two-thirds of them.
The standards were streamlined into 10 key indicators and re-launched in October 2004. They were revised periodically before being withdrawn altogether from April 2008 in line with the new performance framework for local government.
Representations from members of the public about a library service should initially be made to the authority responsible.
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