Wandsworth Council is planning to put the contract to run its 11 libraries out to tender in a bid for savings — with a scrutiny committee set to consider the proposal on Wednesday evening.
The current operator, GLL — which trades as Better and is a charitable social enterprise — has held the contract since 2013. It is worth £5.2 million a year and runs until March 2028, after the council extended it last July to deliver its “Libraries First!” five-year strategy.
Committee papers drawn up for Wednesday’s meeting of the Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee recommend retendering from a list of five options — retendering, a further contract extension, insourcing, a trust or mutual, and a community partnership. The papers use the word “savings” 13 times, though the saving expected from the tender is quantified nowhere in the 20 pages.
“The purpose of this work is to secure a sustainable future for Wandsworth’s libraries by procuring a new contract that can modernise service delivery, improve resilience and achieve financial savings, while maintaining the reach and value of the current service,” the report says.
“Competitive procurement is preferred because it enables the Council to test the market, reset the specification, strengthen outcomes, support innovation and seek savings while protecting service quality,” it adds.
Crucially, the papers do not propose closing any library, shortening opening hours or cutting staff. But they say nothing about hours or staffing under a new contract at all, and nowhere do they require bidders to keep all 11 libraries open.
In a library service, the money goes on staff, buildings and books — so that is where any saving has to come from. The papers do not say which.
The committee meets at 7.30pm on Wednesday 23 September in Room 123 at Wandsworth Town Hall — the meeting is open to the public and will be chaired by Cllr Leonie Cooper. A decision is due at Cabinet on Monday 12 October. The report was drawn up under cabinet member for environment Cllr Ethan Brooks.
If approved, bids would be invited and scored between spring and autumn 2027, with the winning bidder chosen in late 2027 or early 2028. A further one-year extension of the GLL contract is being kept as a fallback.
The service is described in the papers as “high performing” and “not an outlier on cost”. In 2025/26 it recorded 1,323,330 visits, 6,795 events and 1,893,720 book issues.
The retender comes amid a wider council squeeze. Wandsworth launched a “comprehensive Spending Review” in July, paused recruitment, and council tax will double in April — a rise the council blames on an £84 million-a-year cut in government funding. Kemi Badenoch has instructed lawyers to explore a legal challenge to the increase.
Reporting based on: Wandsworth Council committee papers (Paper No. 26-220, Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 23 September 2026), via Putney.news, 22 September 2026.
