In the aftershock of the 2008 Financial Crisis Suffolk County Council outsourced its library service. Here CEO Bruce Leeke discusses how Suffolk Libraries has navigated the last 10 years and what the next crisis might mean for outsourcing.

Suffolk Libraries was the first public library service to move from being council-run to becoming a mutual. That was on 1 August 2012.

At the same time many other councils were either closing libraries, handing them over to volunteers or outsourcing them to organisations like GLL and Carillion. They were all trying to accommodate huge budget cuts during the Government’s ‘era of austerity’.

In Suffolk, the council’s original plan was to shut 29 of its 44 libraries but widespread public support for the service prompted a rethink and the option of mutualisation was taken after the council sought advice. Ten years later, on 1 August 2022, as part of its anniversary celebrations, Suffolk Libraries opened a new library, and now runs 45 of them.

So, the experiment has worked in Suffolk. But the potential wave of mutualisations stopped at four (Suffolk, York, Devon and Nottinghamshire, with Covid derailing Hertfordshire’s plan). Now, with the cost of living crisis set to hit public sector spending, the debate about how best to protect public libraries when councils face huge funding cuts, is starting again. Here Bruce Leeke, who has led Suffolk Libraries since February 2018, discusses this and other questions:

The process of outsourcing library services is usually as a response to financial crises. What is your reading of the impact of the current economic situation, and do you think it is one in which more services might be looking at mutualisation?

Bruce: There’s no doubt there will be a further squeeze on local authority finances as a result of Covid-19 and the emerging turbulence in the global economy – all while we try to recover from the pandemic. This will mean local authorities are once again in a position where they need to make tough choices. Every authority is different, and as a result, library services are funded from different budget lines depending on the council. Where the money comes from is likely to directly influence the financial settlement for each service. Before any local authority looks at mutualisation, I would imagine their first consideration would be how fundamental their library service is to its overall offer to communities.

In Suffolk we are part of the public health budget and I truly believe in the era of Integrated Care Systems that libraries are at the forefront of preventative health. Whether this is a view held by the NHS or other local authorities is open to question. I think rather than mutualisation, the future is about value-adding partnerships and optimising anchor institutions like libraries to benefit the community and their health, wellbeing and practical needs.”

Should becoming a mutual be an option that authorities and library services in good health consider too?

Our ability to significantly expand services, increase opening hours and develop local needs-based offers through our professional staff is an approach that has worked in Suffolk. We’ve achieved all this and made a ten-year saving of £25 million for Suffolk County Council as the annual cost is now 34 per cent less than when the library service was part of the council. So it’s a model that can certainly deliver more for less.

What advantages do you think Suffolk might have in a crisis like this, compared to local authority-run services, or commercially outsourced firms?

Our model is all about empowering colleagues to work with their community to provide support and help with the challenges facing local people. In a local authority and the NHS they call it ‘co-production’. Ironically ‘co-production’ is what we’ve been doing for the past 10 years. The power of this approach in a crisis (or indeed normal times) is that we understand people’s needs and find flexible and innovative ways to meet them. For example, we provide low-cost fresh produce at one of our urban sites, have Sewing Bees sewing therapy in one of our rural sites and a Men Can Talk group in another urban library. All unique programmes designed to meet a specific community need. I would therefore describe our USP as hyper-local, personalised support for the community, in the community.

Would it help the UK Public Library sector as a whole if more services mutualised?

Local authorities want value for money and our experience suggests that’s what the mutual option provides. Our social value work with Moore Kingston Smith continues and we are currently looking to calculate a return on investment number for the entire service. Our approach has often been questioned by traditional voices in the sector, but we are simply trying to put a credible value against the work we do so that key stakeholders, like our funders, can see our wider impact. It’s far too easy for funders and policy makers to have a narrow view of what libraries do.

It’s hard to compare one service against another, but I also know we are having a sustained impact on the health and wellbeing of our communities. This has been proven by academic research conducted by the University of Suffolk. For example, to me it’s fairly obvious that libraries have been doing ‘social prescribing’ for decades – long before the term was invented in an NHS context. So if our hyper-local approach brings these benefits why would other parts of the sector not consider it?

Because you are up against commercial organisations that are looking to grow and sell their services, whose job is it to “sell” the mutual model to the sector now?

Our absolute focus is on our local authority in Suffolk and getting them to understand the amazing value they get from the service we deliver on their behalf. Competition is a natural part of being an independent charity. We compete for different commissioned services with other voluntary sector organisations in Suffolk and beyond. So it’s less about our mutual status and more about what competitive advantage our model brings.

Does the process of mutualisation detach library services from the democratic system, if so is it something that can be remedied?

It brings us closer to the democratic system and ultimately makes us more accountable. We are run by the community, through representatives from our Friends Groups on our Board, for the benefit of the community. Plus, we’re still accountable to the county council. This therefore means our model makes us directly answerable to representatives of the community through our Friends, our funders at Suffolk County Council and especially to the communities we serve every day.

Is delivering the mission of public libraries more aligned to the mutual system than the local authority one? If the council had the finances and wanted to take the library service back in house, what would the arguments be against that?

It depends on what you see as the mission of public libraries. Through a traditional lens it might be seen to be about education and social mobility. Of course, those are pillars of the current service, but we believe that it is now about so much more. We offer a kaleidoscope of services that reflect the needs of each community we serve and so meeting local needs is our mission. Local authorities, like all large bureaucracies, need to implement a level of control and uniformity to function. This approach stifles the agility and flexibility that our model has achieved, ultimately reducing impact and return on investment.

How has becoming a mutual changed the relationship of the service with the wider profession? And how has it changed your employees’/partners’ professionalisation?

The wider sector has changed dramatically in my four years of working in libraries. There is a real sense of collaboration and innovation fostered by sector support organisations like CILIP. I think at times there can still be a bit too much insularity within the sector. While trying to stay engaged with the wider sector we see it as our role to try to push the boundaries whenever we can. Culturally we have worked hard to get colleagues to understand the extraordinary impact they have on people’s lives. This isn’t just about morale, it’s about developing a true sense of their value and their role in the fabric of our communities. It’s also about our identity as a charity that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Being a library mutual and professionalisation do not have to be mutually exclusive things. We have a group of professional, qualified staff to ensure that the ethics of librarianship remains at the core of what we do. We are committed to varying CPD opportunities for our colleagues to ensure what we offer meets the needs of communities. Whether that is through CILIP’s level 3 apprenticeship, core training from Libraries Connected or wider training such as that on mental health and wellbeing.

Can you describe your leadership style and the extent to which that is related to being a mutual? Also whether independence means a different view on risk and responsibility than within local authorities?

I believe in what David Marquet described in his book Turn the Ship Around as the ‘leader leader’ model. This approach focuses on empowering colleagues across an organisation and encouraging them to use affirmative language, ultimately enabling them to make and implement decisions themselves. This is what feeds our model and gives colleagues the freedom to do what they think will work for local people. As a result of the abiding culture, I believe we are a more positive ‘can do’ organisation who are willing to take risks to generate more impact.

To what extent do some of the successes of the last 10 years come down to mutualisation being an invigorating process, rather than innately to do with being a mutual, and whether you need to be wary of the model becoming tired?

Huge cost savings have been achieved in Suffolk as a result of independence, but that’s not the whole story. The culture that we have created is what will create a lasting legacy. That culture is about identifying as a charity rather than a mutual – becoming a mutual feels more like something that is done to an organisation. Having the culture of a charity means that we can take pride in what we deliver for our beneficiaries rather than being focused on what we describe ourselves as and how that defines and differentiates us. From that perspective, when do people ever tire of being part of, or supporting, a hugely impactful charity that delivers for its beneficiaries every day?

How advanced is Suffolk’s digital transformation process and what are the advantages and disadvantages of not having to deal with a local authority IT department?

Our back-office functions, including IT, are incredibly lean. Because we no longer have physical infrastructure – all our systems are in the cloud – we were able to adapt to the challenges of the pandemic and lockdowns almost instantly.

In terms of digital transformation we feel constrained by the limited scope that LMS provide – a theme echoed across the sector. We are developing our own digital platform that uses artificial intelligence to help connect people to our services and others in the community that can help improve wellbeing. This is clearly not a like for like replacement for an LMS but may provide us with the best possible route to developing an intelligent CRM that enables us to improve and personalise our customer journey.

Does being a mutual mean you have different human resources issues/ideals and how that affects recruitment and how you cope with the cost of living crisis on your staff and recruits?

We don’t really have issues that are specific to being a mutual but we do place a great deal of emphasis on the wellbeing of our staff and acknowledging their contribution over the past 10 years.

It is more difficult for us to mirror public sector pay increases pound for pound but we still keep up with the living wage increases and implement other pay increases when we can.

Having said that, we work hard to give back to colleagues in other ways. For example, we have a wellbeing programme, employee assistance programme, staff recognition scheme and a number of other ways we try to engage, inspire and support our wonderful colleagues. Most importantly we want people to feel valued for what they do for others. Pride in delivering the extraordinary everyday has become a bigger and bigger part of our DNA as an organisation over the past 10 years.

Any thoughts on how library services have changed in the last 10 years – whether that’s providing job or health support to communities or having a green agenda – and how that has been affected by independence?

The way people identify with libraries is slowly shifting which is a positive thing. The more traditional, one-dimensional view of libraries is gradually changing, which is vital in terms of ensuring that the library sector gets the recognition and funding it richly deserves. There are now real opportunities to work directly with the NHS and other parts of national government to deliver on a broad set of agendas.

And has independence led to new connections with your community?

We have dozens of partnerships with local, regional and national organisations. These range from a local café providing meal packs for people in need during the various lockdowns, to workplace wellbeing support provided with the East of England Co-op to national commercial partners like Barclays and People Plus. We are constantly evolving our offer to meet local needs and partners bring specialist skills and expertise that enable us to reach more people.

What is the most significant thing you think this 10-year anniversary marks?

It marks an end to our first battle against the odds – delivering more services with less, delivering longer opening hours with less, delivering a library service the people of Suffolk can be proud of with less… and most of all delivering real impact in the community through our resilient, passionate and inspiring colleagues who are always looking to offer more.