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Redundancy warning given to Enfield library workers

2:56pm Friday 15th July 2011 in News Photograph of the Author By David Hardiman

Ordnance Road library, which is rumoured to have been earmarked for closure. Ordnance Road library, which is rumoured to have been earmarked for closure.

LIBRARY staff have been sent letters telling them they could face redundancy as Government cuts bite.

The warning notices were given to 17 staff earlier this week, only ten days after Enfield Council launched a consultation on the future of the library service – which asked for opinions on closing sites.

Speculation that Ordnance Road, Bullsmoor and Enfield Highway had been earmarked for closure started in April after the Labour-run council's finance chief, Councillor Andrew Stafford, said that the council needed to look at “value for money”.

Enfield North MP Nick de Bois, who delivered a petition signed by more than 400 people to the council last month as part of his Hands Off Our Libraries campaign, said the redundancy warnings were “concerning”.

He said: “I'm very surprised to hear about these letters given that at the same time the council are holding a consultation on libraries.

“It smacks of a sham consultation and, most importantly, is very worrying for the staff that are at risk.”

Government cuts of £35 million in council funding led to a 20 per cent reduction in the service's budget when it was decided in March.

It is unclear whether the staff who received redundancy warnings are at specific libraries or hold particular posts.

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In a statement, the council said: “This does not mean that all these members of staff are definitely going to be made redundant – but they are at risk of redundancy.

“The services are being restructured to provide adequate staffing in all libraries and library hours are not affected.”

Comments(2)

hadituptohere says...
7:51am Sat 16 Jul 11

The Labour council is closing the library due to Tory cuts. So joe bloggs who pays his taxes loses out yet again. Has it occured to the Labour councillors that big savings would be met if they reduced their own allowances and claims, on average £14,000 each councillor a year? Years ago councillors were elected to do a job for their community and were unpaid, they did it through a sense of pride in their ward. Nowadays local councillors see themselves as 'apprentice MP's' waiting their turn to join the big time in the Houses of (shame) Parliament. That gravy train attracts them like moths to a light.
Anyway, we only have ourselves to blame for cutbacks. We voted the crooks into office and continue to do so. No use crying over spilt milk. Cutbacks? We can find the money to bomb Libya to pieces, fight a costly pointless war in Afghanistan, pay for wealthy Nigerians to come here and have babies on the NHS yet deny British people who have paid their NI and taxes all their lives treatment or drugs because they are too expensive, send foreign aid to India, a nation that has a massive army, nuclear weapons AND its own space programme. We donated £1.9b to India and it spent £1.3b on its space adventures. Are we all totally mad? Cameron is now going to give away even more of our money in foreign aid, up from £8b to a whopping £12.9b. Thats £12,000,000,000.
Yet 40,000 OAP's died of the cold last winter and we give this huge ammount of cash away!? The LabLibConsters should be ashamed of themselves. And so should we for voting these crooks in.

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Ben weald English Democrat says...
6:42pm Sat 16 Jul 11

Libraries are a great place and should be kept open as they are a place where you not only go to read a book , but also people meet.
Reading is vitally important and we must do what we can to keep them open and of course keep the people who work their in the jobs that they are doing.

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