Budleigh population exceeds that of Sidmouth – Official!

Because of funding cuts imposed by central government a two tier system is being proposed for Devon Libraries. Medium and larger libraries will upgraded to become “Devon Centres” while smaller and less well-used will have to be run by the community, if they are to remain open at all. To separate the well-used from the less well-used, County Hall policy makers are using some very dubious numerical analysis which has been exposed in a letter from an alert Budleigh resident published in this week’s Journal.

Budleigh always thought its library was one of the most heavily used in the county for its size. It has 2,400 borrowers in a town of around 5,000 (48% active borrowers). In comparison Sidmouth has just under 4,000 borrowers for a population around 13,000 (only 31% active borrowers).

Yet in the hands of the bean counters Sidmouth comes near the top of the county pecking order in terms of utilisation rates with Budleigh relegated towards the bottom. The reason is that DCC statistics are calculated on an interesting definition of the catchment area for each library. These are not based straightforwardly on the population of the town in question, nor on the town plus its surrounding villages (which in the case of Budleigh might push its population up to 7,700).

The calculation is much more complicated, adding to the catchment area the population of the postcode of every borrower. So, if a book is borrowed from Budleigh Library by an Exmouth resident (because he or she prefers Budleigh’s poetry section, for example) then Budleigh’s catchment area is increased accordingly. The result is to raise Budleigh’s official catchment area to more than 18,000 (larger than Sidmouth’s) simultaneously reducing its utilisation rating from 48% to a mere 13%!

Budleigh Library seems to have become a victim of its popularity and theand the Mayor, Caz Sismore-Hunt, is quoted as saying “I don’t think using those figures is fair”. We agree.

The message to officials, and councillors for that matter, is that the East Devon Alliance has a team of forensic bean counters always on the lookout to expose any misleading use of data!