St James St. Library to become Drug treatment centre
The story of the closure of St James Street Library already reads like the definitive work on how a council can best show utter contempt for residents.
After the initial illegal closure, ignoring a 1,200 strong petition, and doctoring community council proposals to fund a feasibility study into reopening, the council have buried new plans for the building in the appendix of a monthly financial monitoring report.
As always the residents are left to read about it all in the Waltham Forest Guardian.
Caroline Molloy, of the St James Street Library campaign group, told the Guardian “I am quite shocked that we have not been told about this, our local councillors have made noises about keeping us informed of any progress regarding the building.”
She added: “What this part of Walthamstow needs is a service for the whole of the community“.
“It is no use saying that children no longer go to libraries, if you think that you are writing kids off, libraries give people an education and can prevent them from going on a downward spiral.”
The building will be refurbished into a drop in drug treatment centre at a cost of £350,000.
The only conclusion to be drawn is that the council have deliberately hidden these plans for months until after they were passed.
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can we fight this? is BAG thinking of starting campaign against this?
What services will be offered at the proposed centre? How will it be continuously funded? Are any doctors involved? Are any counselling services available?
They didn’t hide it for months. The lies go back to 2004 when a secret decisonwas akken to transfer the library to the Primar Care Trust as part of a three stage drug treatment programme.
See Council Cabinet Meeting papers for 20 January 2009, p96.
As a PGCE teacher trainee I am very aware of how books and library attendance have been relegated at the expense of less considered, less comprehensively involving use of the internet for research and inspiration. Not to say that internet can’t have its uses in some instances but there seems to be generally a bit of a slide towards quantity not quality of research resources at the moment. Books can help prevent this. They are concrete in a way that the internet never can be and therefore more satisfying aswell as being easier to look at in many ways. They also prevent mindless cutting and pasting and encourage greater focus and methodology for casting ones creative net rather than the rather more superficial and somewhat less academically reliable internet experience.
Councils across the country ought to be taking this into account if not for the pleasure and social aswell as cultural broadening of the mind brought about by a visit to a library or any other established institution or landmarkfor that matter
As far as I know, some residents are meeting up on Wednesday 18th February 10.00am outside the Library.
This centre must be prevented from opening. There are enough junkies in that area asking for money and acosting you everytime you walk up Coopermill Lane and St James’s St. I have had enough! If this opens up, I would be scared to walk passed with my child or alone and I live on the corner of Coopermill Lane and Edward Road.
I would be grateful if anyone could provide me with any more information on this matter.
Many thanks