Jo Cornish Interim CEO at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP)
OPINION
At the end of January 2024, the UK’s gross national debt was estimated by the Treasury at £2.6 trillion. This means that we owe in debts to banks and lenders roughly 96.5% of our gross domestic product. To put that in perspective, if the next government set aside £25 billion a year in savings, it would still take more than a century to pay down the national debt. At the same time, as our population grows bigger and older, the costs of providing vital social care and local services increase daily.
This is the complex equation that faces the next chancellor when they come into office. How do you reduce borrowing, boost economic activity and still deliver the quality local services that create attractive places to live? They could do worse than look to our national network of public libraries for answers.
For many, libraries are those unobtrusive places on the high street offering a mix of books and magazines, fun activities for the family and space for local groups. What people seldom realise is how much of a long-term impact public libraries have on the economic life and wellbeing of their community.
Almost all library services now run regular ‘job club’ sessions, offering support and job search facilities. According to 2023 figures from IT provider Lorensbergs, 80% of libraries are seeing increased demand for employment-related support across the UK.
The next chancellor could look to the remarkable return on investment offered by local libraries – one economic study in the East of England estimated that libraries return six times their running costs to the UK economy.
At the same time, public libraries are addressing the challenges of delivering social care to an ageing population. In much the same way as pharmacists are now providing frontline healthcare, librarians and library workers find themselves increasingly at the frontline in meeting complex social needs.
Research commissioned by the Arts Council England suggests that working with libraries can deliver real-terms financial savings for hard-pressed health and care services, as well as impacting positivel
