Published: 15 December 2011
BY DAN CARRIER and GEORGIA GRAHAM

LIBRARY groups are facing an anxious wait to discover if their bids to keep their branches open will be approved by the Town Hall.

Council officers have trawled through proposals made by five groups bidding to run the Heath, Belsize and Chalk Farm branches.

Three of the groups have been shortlisted, one for each branch, and now leisure chief Labour councillor Tulip Siddiq and the Town Hall’s environment chief Rachel Stopard will evaluate their proposals before making a final decision on December 20.

After considering the five expressions of interest, the Town Hall has told the Primrose Hill Community Association it is the preferred bidder for Chalk Farm, while The Winch Community Centre is lined up for Belsize.

The Phoenix Group – made up of The Friends of Heath Library, the South End Green Association and the Heath and Hampstead Society – has been given preferred status for the Keats Grove branch.

Although the identities of other bidders have not been revealed, officers said that three different groups asked to take over the Belsize branch in Antrim Grove.

The reasons for The Winch being given preferred status ahead of the other two bids have not been supplied.

It is understood that no profit-making library providers, who had offered to take libraries off the council’s hands, bid for the branches.

The bids came in after the council ran workshops in September explaining what they would need to do to make the libraries a success.

Mike Clarke, head of libraries at Camden, said: “We have had three proposals that are viable but we still have some questions.”

He also praised the groups that had said they would like to run the libraries.

He added: “They have done an incredible job pulling this together in a short space of time.”

He revealed that in Chalk Farm, he wanted some assurances that the financial model drawn up by the group was robust enough.

He said: “We want to make sure this is realistic.”

However, residents and campaigners are determined that their plans for the library will stand up, and gathered with dozens of the youngest library users this week to launch their new library fundraising thermometer.

The mercury on the hand-drawn marker is currently standing at an impressive £300,000 after just a month of fundraising – but the Primrose Hill Community Association leading the bid are aiming for £1.2 million in pledges.

The campaign must be one of the country’s glitziest with stars such as Joan Bakewell, Sadie Frost and Jon Snow all backing the campaign. Author India Knight told the New Journal last week she would be pledging her time and money to the new library.