Spending cuts put libraries at risk, authors warn

Access to literary culture will shrink in Britain as a result of the cuts announced in today's spending review, authors and publishers warned today.

Chancellor George Osborne announced this afternoon that council budgets, from which library services are funded, would be cut by 7.1% every year for four years, as part of the Chancellor's measures to tackle the UK's £83bn deficit.

Osborne also announced a 30% cut to the arts budget, higher than observers had expected, which will have a knock-on effect on grant-assisted publishers and writers' organisations.

Introducing the review, Osborne said job losses were "unavoidable when the country has run out of money" – and public sector trade union Unison said the local government budget cuts would have serious effects for library workers. But senior national officer Louise Thirlby warned that "library staff are crucial to the delivery of a good library service. Even prior to the announcement we were already experiencing authorities trying to close libraries, reduce staff numbers and replace them with volunteers ... The impact of the comprehensive spending review will be that authorities will escalate their plans. Since 1997, the total number of staff has fallen by 14% – this will now increase, as libraries become a soft target for cuts to staffing numbers without really analysing the consequences for their local economy and population."

Former children's laureate Michael Rosen warned that any cuts to libraries would damage opportunities for children and young people. "People don't universally understand that literature does more than inform and educate, it takes children from the particular to the abstract, an essential skill for GCSEs and university, and for achievement," he said. "All the statistics show that kids who read widely and for enjoyment have access to those higher forms of thought, and cuts to libraries mean cutting kids off from that. The cuts will just make it harder for libraries to provide outreach work and school visits – everything around making books accessible."

Joanna Prior, managing director of the Penguin General division of Penguin Books, publishing authors such as Nick Hornby, Helen Dunmore and Zadie Smith, said the cuts would damage the crucial work libraries do towards reading and social inclusion, as well as affecting a wide range of publishing. Calling libraries "a really important part of the wider creative industry", she said: "Libraries provide an audience for our authors, not just the big authors, but also new writers and niche writers, and they also bring harder-to-reach audiences, such as teenagers. For Nick Hornby's book for teenagers, Slam, for example, we held lots of events in libraries because libraries are so embedded within their communities, with schools. Libraries also reach BME (black and mixed ethnicity) audiences which we as an industry are very keen to engage with."

Prior warned that job cuts among library staff could be highly damaging. "The anxiety must be around losing dedicated, passionate book lovers from the library service because of job losses. While we understand the need for efficiency savings, we don't want people to lose the chance to encounter their passion and expertise. Libraries stimulate social inclusion – access to books and reading improves life chances and opportunities for young people and adults, and the belief in universal access to reading is something we fundamentally hope to preserve."

A broad group of bodies engaged with the library service – including the Society of Authors, the Royal Society of Literature and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals – have already joined forces to present an urgent message to local authority chiefs about the value of the public library service.