Listed building left to rot? Don't worry, it's the council's.

11:27am Thursday 28th August 2008

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By Janet Wright »

A beautiful listed building has been damaged and is being left to decay, putting the safety of its users at risk. Don’t worry, you may say, the council can order the owners to maintain it. Tough luck, it’s Waltham Forest Council’s own flagship library in Walthamstow town square.

The magnificent 100-year-old library underwent a flashy £3.5 million makeover in 2006. To the stunned dismay of its users, when it was reopened, all the stately wooden shelving had been removed, along with most of the books. A vast glass atrium had been tacked on, combining waste of space with high cost and heavy carbon footprint: impossible to heat or cool to a bearable temperature, it is unused much of the time. Another glass extension contains computers - equally pointless because the temporary post office is due to move out of the library building soon, leaving an empty space which could have become the computer room.

The building has already had work done to tackle squeaking floors and noisy acoustics caused by the makeover. But it seems the roof, leaking since the extensions were added, has never been mended. Readers and staff have complained about the huge damp stain that’s been spreading slowly across the wall of the main room since last year. Ornate Edwardian plasterwork has crumbled and woodwork is rotting. A photo by local resident Dr Sieglinde Dlabal with a news story in last week’s Waltham Forest Guardian shows some of the damage.

For the past few months, there’s been a smell of mould in the main fiction hall. That adds a health hazard, especially to the staff and to anyone at risk such as children, old people or those with asthma or mould allergies.

The council has spent £10m of our money on messing around with the borough's libraries in the past few years. This has mainly meant ripping all permanent shelving out of others, ditching most of the books and buying the sort of cheap paperbacks you can pick up in any charity shop. It’s hard to see where the money went, when they also closed St James Street library and got rid of most of the borough’s trained staff. But in the case of the main library, it meant £3.5m vandalism.

Questions for the council: * Who did the architectural plans for Walthamstow central library’s ‘refurbishment’?

* Who did the building work?

* In the light of recent Waltham Forest scandals, were council regulations and the law followed in awarding the contract?

* Thousands of pounds worth of wooden shelving disappeared during recent library makeovers: who took it, and was the council paid for this?

Incidentally, the council’s response to the news story was that a leak has “damaged paint” in the library.

That’s rather like saying an iceberg “damaged paint” on the Titanic – except that the destruction of Walthamstow’s heritage is slow, predictable and could be stopped immediately if anyone on the council cared.