Press statement: Securing the future of Hove Library

Brighton & Hove City Council needs to reduce its costs by £51 million over the next three years. Of this, library services will need to make a contribution to these savings, estimated at over half a million pounds.

Hove Library is a much loved historic building, but is expensive to run. The age and design of the building means it will need more investment to maintain it in future. In order to keep providing modern library services to communities, the council is exploring how to generate more income to help cover the costs of Hove Library.

So far, ideas include leasing a small part of the building to the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM), on the first floor, as a new base for library provision for their students. The library could also host a café with a community focus in the ground floor open space area, while they are also looking at the possibility of hiring out the basement as new office space or a nursery.

All of the ideas proposed have been developed to make sure that existing Hove library users can still enjoy the same access and services they want, while widening the use of the building to the local community, and pulling in the extra income needed help meet the rising costs.

The council is now looking at what demand in the market there is for using Hove Library, what works are needed to the building to accommodate any commercial use, as well as what the Hove library users think of the ideas.

Residents can see a plan of Hove Library and email their comments here.