The terms "comprehensive and efficient" are not defined within the 1964 Act. However, broadly speaking, the Act requires library authorities to provide free of charge, access for people who live, work or study in their area to borrow or refer to books, printed material and pictures in line with their needs and requirements.
The Public Library Service Standards help to define a comprehensive and efficient service. They are a set of targets across core provision areas. They are not based in statute and failure to meet one or more of the standards does not necessarily signify a breach of the 1964 Act. However, failure to comply with the standards will have an impact upon the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) of the local authority.
Similarly, the closure of one or even a small number of library branches does not necessarily signify a breach of the 1964 Act. Sometimes a library authority will close a library to ensure a better, more efficient service across its geographical area overall. DCMS will judge on the basis of overall provision. However, DCMS and its Ministers would be concerned where any closures stemmed from wholly financial considerations or where the library service appeared to be affected disproportionately by an authority's need to make savings.
As a rule, user's representations about a library service should be made to the authority responsible. DCMS may only intervene formally in an authority where it has grounds to believe that the1964 Act may have been breached.
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The Audit Commission's Building Better Libraries report, published in 2002, painted a stark picture of public libraries. In the previous 10 years, visits to libraries had fallen by 17% and loans by nearly a quarter. There was also evidence of under-investment in library services by some authorities.
Even before the report was published, DCMS had commissioned the 149 library authorities to produce annual library plans (now defunct) to encourage better planning and accountability within services. These were followed shortly afterwards by the first set of public library standards.
The purpose of the standards was to assess each authority's performance against 26 core targets. Set at the level of the best 25% of libraries (as they were performing in 1999-00) authorities were asked to meet the standards by the end of 2003-04. Although few authorities met every standard by this time, the standards primed many improvements including longer opening hours in 75% of library authorities and increased acquisitions within two-thirds of them. The standards were streamlined into 10 key public library service standards and re-launched in October 2004.
