Plumstead library moving to temporary home on High Street

With work to construct a new Plumstead library and leisure centre set to soon begin Greenwich Council have announced a temporary library is to be located at Abery Street car park in Plumstead High Street.

There has been confusion for months about whether the library would have to move. It is now confirmed it will.

Expect a portable cabin like structure. The car park will remain open with the library in place and will provide spaces for 12 cars.

The Council aims to have the library on site by Summer 2018 until Autumn 2019.

Greenwich Council have long aimed to close Abery Street Car Park. They’ve had a “temporary car park” sign up for about a decade now. They grossly underestimated how many cars used it as many drivers did not pay to park.

Shambolic parking enforcement meant almost no fines were ever issued for lack of payment so Greenwich didn’t have a clue how it was used.

It took local people manually measuring to find out the truth.

Plans for the new library and leisure centre in Plumstead recently increased 48% to £16.6 million.

It does look a very promising building and facility in renders though Greenwich Council decided to fund it entirely using local funds, including selling off local buildings and assets.

Most authorities fund this sort of upgrade by partly sourcing external funding and not lumbering all costs on local people.

I can see footfall at the temporary library being very high given it’s central location. Maybe it always should have moved to a new location instead of being rebuilt a fair way from most shops on the High Street at its current site?

A new permanent library with housing above on Abery Street may have worked, though the loss of parking wouldn’t have gone down well, however if Greenwich are to sell anyway it could have been a decent option.

That way the existing site could have been a bigger leisure centre. The planned new leisure centre has been criticised for being smaller that the centre it replaces.

Anyway, it’s all academic now.

Plumstead library will remain where it is long term.