Cabinet is asked on 12 October to put the borough's £5.2m library service out to tender, ending 13 unbroken years with GLL unless it wins again.
Wandsworth’s eleven libraries are heading for a change of contract. Officers are asking Cabinet to agree, on 12 October, to put the whole £5.2m-a-year service out to competitive tender, a process that would end thirteen unbroken years under Greenwich Leisure Limited unless GLL wins the work again.
The proposal is set out in Paper No. 26-220, Wandsworth Libraries: Future delivery model options. The Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee saw it on Wednesday 23 September and resolved that the report be considered for scrutiny. The council’s own record of that meeting confirms it is a Key Decision and that Cabinet will take it on 12 October 2026.
Nothing changes for readers yet. The current contract runs to March 2028, and officers say the point of starting now is that a compliant procurement cannot be done any faster.
Who runs Wandsworth’s libraries
GLL is a charitable social enterprise. It was awarded the Wandsworth contract in 2013, when the service was outsourced, and the report says it also runs libraries in Bromley, Dudley, Lincolnshire and Greenwich, plus prison library services for HM Prison and Probation Service, including at Wandsworth Prison.
The original contract covered 2013 to 2021 with an option to extend. It has been extended since, most recently from April 2026 to March 2028, and a further one-year extension to 2029 is available if the council approves it. The report treats that extension as a fallback rather than a plan.
The figures behind the decision
Use of the service is rising, which is the part of the report that cuts against the usual story about libraries. The officers’ own performance table records:
| Measure | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library visits | 1,117,643 | 1,292,100 | 1,323,330 |
| Books issued, print and digital | 1,785,805 | 1,878,118 | 1,893,720 |
| Events delivered | 3,361 | 6,063 | 6,795 |
| Enquiries handled | 93,775 | 92,134 | 97,383 |
| Hours of PC or Wi-Fi use | 456,298 | 465,974 | 343,098 |
| Visits to library websites | 502,869 | 523,802 | 613,598 |
Visits are up by more than 205,000 in two years and events have doubled. The one measure falling is time on library computers and Wi-Fi, down by around 122,000 hours in a year.
On cost, the appraisal puts Wandsworth at £15.09 per resident against £25.16 in Richmond upon Thames, using comparable 2025/26 net costs of £5,002,953 here across 331,456 residents and £4,918,645 there across 195,513. The council notes the comparison does not adjust for branch size, service mix or building footprint.
Against the wider London picture the report uses CIPFA 2024/25 figures and puts Wandsworth at about £15 per resident, £1 below the London median of £16, with 3.53 libraries per 100,000 residents against a London median of 3.64. Total spend, £5.15m, is above the London median of £4.67m, which the report attributes to the size of the borough’s population.
Five options, and what officers said about each
The appraisal tested five delivery models. Its conclusions, as written:
- Re-tender the contract from 2028. Preferred option. Tests the market, resets the specification and creates scope for savings.
- Extend the GLL contract to 2029. Fallback only. Protects continuity but offers less scope for innovation or a service reset.
- Insource the service. Not preferred. Adds cost and transition risk and loses some charitable benefits. The report says insourcing could involve collaboration with Richmond through a Better Services Partnership.
- Spin out a council-sponsored trust or mutual. Not recommended at this stage. Requires substantial commitment and a long lead-in period.
- Community partnership, with the council running the core network and community organisations running smaller libraries. Not preferred. Depends on community capacity and risks variable quality and oversight.
The case against insourcing is largely a bill the council does not currently pay. Because GLL is a charity it gets relief on business rates, and the appraisal sets out what the council would face if it took the service back in house: £614,586 a year in national non-domestic rates across the eleven buildings, plus an estimated £150,000 to £761,000 to transfer GLL staff back in house.
| Library | Annual rates liability if insourced |
|---|---|
| Battersea | £126,500 |
| Wandsworth Town | £124,775 |
| Putney | £120,175 |
| Balham | £70,725 |
| Southfields | £30,803 |
| Northcote | £29,415 |
| Tooting | £28,860 |
| Battersea Park | £23,827 |
| Earlsfield | £23,079 |
| York Gardens | £19,586 |
| Roehampton | £16,841 |
| Total | £614,586 |
Why the council says it is doing this now
The report is explicit that money is the driver. It says the review was carried out “in response to forthcoming financial pressures and the Government’s proposed Fair Funding approach”, and the appraisal lists Fair Funding pressure alongside the March 2028 contract expiry as the reason to start now.
That is the same pressure behind the borough’s proposed council tax rise for April 2027, and the libraries paper went to the same committee meeting as the Environment service’s share of the council’s Spending Review, Paper No. 26-227.
Two legal points sit behind the decision. The new contract is expected to exceed the threshold at which the Procurement Act 2023 applies, so the tender has to follow that Act. And whoever runs the buildings, the council keeps the statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service under section 7 of the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964.
What it means for you
Nothing changes in the branches this year, or next. The indicative timetable in the paper runs like this:
- Autumn 2026 to winter 2026/27: develop the specification, scope and procurement strategy
- Winter 2026/27 to spring 2027: market engagement and final tender documents
- Spring to autumn 2027: tender period, evaluation and clarification
- Late 2027 or early 2028: committee and Cabinet decide who gets the contract
- Ahead of March 2028: the new contract starts
The moment that matters for residents is the specification, not the award. That document decides opening hours, staffing, the digital offer and what a provider has to deliver, and the paper says a draft will go to Leader’s Group for comment before it is published. If you use a Wandsworth library, that is the stage to watch, and Cabinet is being asked to delegate the writing of it to the Executive Director of Resident Services, Paul Chadwick, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Environment and the Executive Director of Finance.
Cabinet meets on 12 October 2026. Papers for both that meeting and the 23 September scrutiny meeting are published on the council’s democracy site.
For the wider finances, see our reporting on the council tax rise planned for April 2027 and the council’s Spending Review.
Sources: Wandsworth Council, Paper No. 26-220 Wandsworth Libraries: Future delivery model options and Appendix 1, the libraries option appraisal, both published for the Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee of 23 September 2026; and the printed record of proceedings for that meeting.
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