This case study forms part of "Guidance for libraries and archives on Local Government Reorganisation" which aims to support library and archive Head of Services to prepare for local government reorganisation and the impact this will have on their services. The guidance has been written for Libraries Connected, The National Archives, the Local Government Association and Arts Council England by Shared Intelligence.
LGR context
In 2018 Northamptonshire issued a Section 114 notice, triggering the start of a LGR process in 2019. The LGR process, known as ‘Future Northants’ involved Northamptonshire County Council and its 7 district councils. A comprehensive scoping phase was conducted collating information about service costs, staffing models and operational details.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant delay in the reorganisation process. As a result, rather than aiming to deliver significant transformation by vesting day on 1 April 2021, the priority was simply to be ‘safe and legal’ and a ‘lift and shift’ approach was taken to transferring responsibilities. This left many aspects of the LGR programme deferred until after vesting day.
Due to the pressures that had led Northamptonshire to issue a Section 114 notice, the library service had already begun a process of transformation including transferring some libraries to community groups. This meant that by the time the LGR process began, the library service was already in a state of readiness for significant change.
Model
On vesting day library assets and staff were split between North and West Northamptonshire. Most of the service is now disaggregated but library management and support services remain shared between the two new unitaries under a joint agreement. This includes managerial posts and some back-office functions such as the library management and book lending systems which are hosted by West Northamptonshire and provided to North Northamptonshire.
Since vesting day further work has been done to explore disaggregation of the remaining management and support functions, but analysis has shown this would lead to the duplication of functions, and no clear financial benefit for either authority.
Opportunities and challenges
One advantage of keeping joint systems is that is enables a seamless experience for customers, who can retain their access to services across the new boundaries. This is especially the case for the library management system, which if split would affect the choice and service available to residents.
One challenge of joint systems is that tensions can arise when there is a divergence in strategic aims between the two authorities. For example, if the two authorities have separate strategies for their library service rather than a joint strategy, this can create a strain on the relationship. This can be alleviated by the services working together to create a joint strategy, even if the library service offer differs between them.
