£2.5m project means whole new chapter for threatened libraries

Last weekend, thousands of people in Yorkshire and across Britain turned out to protest over plans unveiled by councils to cut public library provision, and more announcements of closures are expected.

In Doncaster, plans to close 14 of the borough’s 26 libraries are being fought and concerned campaigners have already staged demonstrations in Sheffield, ahead of budget proposals expected later this month.

But in the Parson Cross area of the city, an organisation known as SOAR has been quietly working on a new building for more than a decade, and when it opens this summer it will include a new lending library.

Ian Drayton, SOAR’s partnership manager, said money for the project came from lottery grants, the Government’s Homes and Communities Agency and Sheffield Council, before local authority cuts became an issue.

SOAR said the building, known as the Learning Zone, will be more than a library, with social housing provider Sheffield Homes taking office space for staff who work on the Parson Cross housing estate.

Mr Drayton said ongoing success would rely on attracting other tenants to take space and pay rent, including national organisations such as A4e and Remploy, which help people back into the jobs market.

He added: “The project goes back 10 years. There was an adult learning centre in Parson Cross which closed but local people decided they wanted to make sure there was some kind of facility in the area.

“It has taken a long time to get to this stage, but patience has paid off. We are hoping to get public health services into the building and make it a place where local people meet.

“Libraries need to reinvent themselves for the 21st century and deliver their services in association with other services.

“We hope that is what the Learning Zone will provide in this community.

“Within the library there will be 12 public access computers and we plan to run work clubs for unemployed people. We also want to run homework clubs so that different generations use the building and meet.

“At the moment young people and older residents don’t mix and if we can get them to see each other in the library we hope the elderly will realise that not all young people are tearaways.”

Mr Drayton said local people and organisations were directly involved in the selection of architects for the design process and had taken a “lead role” in the later aspects of the project.

A volunteer group of “friends” has helped to design the layout and fit-out and will also select the books that eventually fill the shelves in the library, which will run on a computerised self-service basis.

SOAR hopes the project will help to turn around some of the statistics attached to the Parson Cross estate and the surrounding area, which is home to around 80,000 people.

The estate has poor rates of pupils staying on at school or going on to higher education and has Sheffield’s highest percentage of Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants.

Figures also show that the health status of people living in the Parson Cross area is significantly worse than that of the city as a whole, with lower life expectancy, higher mortality and higher hospital admission rates.

Local MP David Blunkett has supported SOAR in its efforts to build the library since the original blueprints were first drawn up in 2001 and has visited the project several times to check on work for himself.

Mr Blunkett said: “For a large swathe of adults and young people alike, library facilities have long been a window on the world and an opportunity for informal learning as well as pleasure. 

“This is particularly true on the Parson Cross estate where, historically, there has been gross inequality in relation to educational opportunity, which is now being reversed.

“Linking the Learning Zone and the new imaginative library and digital facilities with local schools and adult learning is a vital part of both offering hope for the future and contributing to the regeneration and employment prospects of an area whose people have lost out for far too long.

“I am really proud that, after so much tenacious effort by so many people locally, this new way forward is at last coming to fruition.”