"Council pays more to rent library site than Coventry City FC pays to lease Ricoh Arena"

Coventry City Council currently pays more to rent the site of the Arena Park library per year than Coventry City FC pays to rent the Ricoh Arena.



The council has spent about £2.5m running the Arena Park library since it opened after signing up to a ten-year lease which committed them to retail-level rents

The current cost of running the library is £218,000 a year - made up of £110,850 rent, a £17,222 lease service charge and £47,082 business rates, as well as cleaning and energy costs.

Coventry City FC currently pays a reported £100,000 a year rent to play at the neighbouring Ricoh Arena.

The Telegraph recently revealed the library will move less than one mile to Holbrooks Community Care Association, on Holbrooks Lane, as the council bids to shave £1.2m from its library and services budget this year.

But the council insisted the decision to base the library at Arena Shopping Park had been seen as a success in many ways, despite the apparent high rent levels.

Chris West, the council’s finance director, oversaw the move when the council committed to the long term lease in 2004 and then agreed to a 24 per cent rent increase five years’ later.

He said: “When the decision was taken to put the library there, local government and the economy was in a different place to where it is now. Spending that amount of money now doesn’t make sense.

“At the time we had an inspection of our library service and we were told we had to improve and open more and better community libraries. That was at the time the were building Arena Shopping Park.

“It was successful in terms of the number of visitors it has attracted, but in different times it’s a decision we need to reverse.

“Paying commercial retail rent isn’t affordable in the current financial climate.”

Mr West said it was difficult to assess like for like how expensive the library was to run in comparison to other sites, as there are complicated arrangements on some properties, while the council owns others.

Asked if the council had agreed the high rent levels in a bid to make the Arena Park development more attractive to site developers Tesco, he said: “It was pragmatism, it was nothing to do with giving Tesco a subsidy.”

A council spokesman added: “The library is such a small part of the overall development that it would have been an inconsequential decision for Tesco – they would not recoup their costs of development through permitting a library.”

The council initially paid £89,400 annual rent, which rose to £110,850 on review in 2009. The 10-year lease expired in 2014 and since then has been rolling over on the existing terms.

If ar$eholes could fly the council house would be an airport.

Arena Park Library in Coventry to close by the end of the month



Arena Park Library in Coventry is to close at the end of the month with the possibility of a nearby community group taking over.

The last day of opening for the library will be Saturday, August 27.

The closure of the library in the Arena Park Shopping Park is part of a series of cuts by Coventry City Council.

Staff and volunteers from Holbrooks Community Care Association are hoping to move some of the books to their premises in Holbrook Lane and run a library from there.

The rest would be put in store by the council.

They have put a bid in to the city council for a one-off grant to combine several small rooms into one big one to house the library, but they haven’t yet heard if they have the cash.

If the plan goes ahead a mix of staff and volunteers would run the library opening in October.

At the moment the association is open only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

It’s not clear what the opening hours for the library would be.

Coun Rachel Lancaster (Lab, Holbrook) who used to work at Holbrooks Community Care Association and now volunteers there said: “Some of the services that were in the library are things the Holbrooks Community Care Association does anyway such as silver surfers, an ancestry club for family history and employment club.”

Member of the Save Coventry Libraries campaign Sarah Smith said: “When we went to Arena Park Library in July 823 people signed out petition and most of them were shocked to hear the library was closing. They didn’t know.

“We understand the rent was high but why did the library move into that building in the first place if the rent was so high?

“The council has had plenty of time to come up with new strategies but we still don’t know what is going to happen to the library.”