Central Library is still under threat of being moved from its historic home on College Green despite a U-turn by mayor Marvin Rees, council leaders admit. Bristol City Council cabinet member for communities Cllr Ellie King refused to rule out a relocation after this year, saying the Grade I-listed building was not fit for purpose to hold money-making events and that libraries should be seen as “a service, not a building”.
She said Broadmead would be a better base for the city’s main library because it had bus links from more diverse parts of the city and that the streets around College Green were “quite an exclusive shopping area, so it attracts a certain cohort of people”. Cllr King also revealed that its current home faced “huge building costs” which would “escalate”.
Plans to move Central Library were raised in the Bristol mayor’s annual draft budget in November but then scrapped following an outcry. The original proposals included £1.4million cuts to the library service as the local authority faces a huge funding gap.
Read more: Bristol's Central Library could move to former Debenhams building, say council chiefs
Following public consultation, Mr Rees announced earlier this month that the money – amounting to about a third of libraries’ existing budget – would no longer be withdrawn and that the main branch was staying put. He said: “Central Library will remain in its current home and we will not move ahead with the other aspects of those savings proposals.
“Instead, we will work with the city to find ways to sustainably run these departments with less government funding in the long term.” But at a cabinet meeting less than a week later on Tuesday, January 24, library campaigner Liv Fortune asked the council leaders if they would accept that residents were “not at all open to Central Library being relocated from its iconic and well-established home and to refrain from threatening to relocate it in future?”
Cllr King replied at the meeting at City Hall, which is opposite the library: “We posed a question that we needed to explore in the face of an £80million potential gap. Nothing was off the table – we had to do it as part of being a responsible cabinet and it was only right that we did that.
“While it’s off the table for this year I can’t promise what future administrations will do because the potential risk will come back our way again and I can’t guarantee what their decisions will be. But it’s only right to look at it and explore it because if we want to talk about what a modern library service should look like, it should be one that is fully accessible – Central Library isn’t.
“We need to talk about how much a building costs and how much we can cope with that. Central Library is going to have huge building costs that we need to deal with.
“Is it right that the whole service and the council become responsible for that problem that’s going to escalate while we try to fix it up?” Cllr King, who suggested at a council scrutiny meeting in November moving the library into the former Debenhams building in Broadmead, said the authority needed to generate income so the service was sustainable.
“Central Library can’t do that – it’s continually saying no to events because of its listed building status which means it can’t be used for everything because we can’t move around the furniture how they want, so it’s limited and it’s not necessarily reflective of what a modern library service should be,” Cllr King said. “Not to mention the footfall that we get – the people who come around here have certain transport links that we don’t have in other areas of the city.
“Broadmead has buses that go there that we don’t have around here from all parts of the city, so you’ve only got certain areas that are accessing the library and it’s quite an exclusive shopping area, so it attracts a certain cohort of people. I’m quite interested in other areas such as Broadmead that get a whole range of people from all over the city, from all demographics, and I really want a diverse and inclusive library.”
She said questions like Central Library’s location needed to be asked and discussed “without there being a knee-jerk reaction”. Cllr King added: “We need to have the conversation and have it responsibly and look at the service as a whole because I didn’t get one email about the other 26 libraries, it was only about Central Library.
“What about the other 26? It’s a service, it isn’t a building.”
Read next:
Central library could relocate to save Bristol City Council millions
Bristol Central Library relocation opposed in Tory motion to full council
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