Our “not for profit” community partnership bid has been shortlisted by Lewisham Council to take on the lease & running of Forest Hill library 
The first interviews are this Friday!
See here for all bid info:
http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/myservices/libraries/Documents/Tender%20pack%2020160304.pdf
Well done Pauline and all involved! Aside from the benefit to families of the library, the building itself is also beautiful and it would be sad to see it redeveloped and lose its public access. Fingers crossed that your bid is accepted.
That’s fantastic news Pauline! We’re so pleased for you. We will be thinking of you all lots on Friday and have our fingers crossed. You’re so amazing!
The building will be protected as it is listed. Let’s hope we have a chance to protect the services too.
Thanks for the support guys, we’ll do all we can #FingerCrossed
Great news. Hopefully we’ll win.
Well I’ve just had a pre celebrated glass of wine with John Russell at the Sylvan affter closing tonight to go over today’s meeting with Lewisham Council.
Went brilliant! Job well done John & Tara.
John will join & I can verify him straight away.
Sounds good Pauline - you deserve a relaxing weekend doing nothing - sounds like it’s been a crazy busy week for you.
Hahaha @anon5422159 no rest for the wicked so they say!
Weekend is my busiest work time, so off to bed for me soon for work in the morning 
Roll on Monday #MyDayOff
Here’s a sneaky peak of our library bid!
Please feel free to leave comments & suggestions on our bid all!
Best of luck - you all deserve it. With you all the way
Thanks Maggie @magse23 that’s much appreciated x
Fingers crossed 
Cheers @Londondrz much appreciated 
Our bid was mentioned in the Evening Standard yesterday!
Cheers for mentioning it on Twitter @CllrPaulUpex
Sure you’ve seen this already @Michael @V22_Louise_House @JohnRussell 
The Forest Hill Society have been working with V22 and Forest Hill Traders Association to bid to manage Forest Hill Library. We have now been recommended as the preferred partner group to take on management of the library.
Lewisham Council’s Safer Stronger Communities Select Committee will meet on Monday 4th July to discuss library services. Documents online show that council officers are preparing a report to Mayor and Cabinet will recommend that:
"V22 is approved as the preferred partner for Forest Hill and that the Executive Director for Regeneration is delegated to negotiate a lease for the Forest Hill Library building for a minimum term of 25 years to enable the provision of a community library in partnership with Lewisham Council."
There will still be a number of contractual and technical issues to sort out before the transition occurs, but we are confident that we can work with the council to create a good community library for Forest Hill.
In the last few months more than 80 people have got in contact to offer their help volunteering in the library once it becomes a community run library. Thank you to all our members who have been in contact to tell us the importance of the library in the community, and who are willing to put their time and energy into ensuring a successful future for this important asset in Forest Hill.
However, the library is currently open for 66 hours per week, so we will still need more volunteers to help staff the library properly and safely. Whether you are available during the day or in the evenings for a few hours per week, it would be great to hear from you.
If you would be interested in volunteering for a few hours per week at the library we would like to hear from you so that we have a great volunteer list ready for the transition in the autumn. At this stage we don’t know what your duties would be, but an interest in books and internet research would be a big advantage. If you would be interested, please contact michael@fhsoc.com
Massive thanks to everyone for supporting us on this, we really appreciate it.
And as Michael has said the more volunteers we have the better 
We’re one more step closer now, just one more to go 
Very encouraging. Happy to help eves and the odd weekend. I also have some gear which might be useful:
Acer 17" laptop with WiFi, DVD drive. Running W7, could be upgraded free to W10 if you’re quick, deadline looms.
External USB hard drive, 1TB capacity
Guillotine (with guarded blade!)
Paper / card creasing machine (manually operated)
Hand-held electronic label printing machine - Epson LW400, new
None of this is earning its keep with me, let me know if anything looks useful and I can drop it in.
Thank you so much!
Thats amazing, thank you for the laptop etc. That’s a massive bag of sweets on me when you drop it in
OK should be next weekend. See you on Thursday across the road anyway!
Thank you again & yup see ya there
Hi
Gotta say I’m so super excited about our bid, but really scared just incase…
We have to win this right?
My stomach is in turmoil…
I know we can do this!
ETA We need to be allowed to do this
stomach cna relax - well done all of you!
Thanks so much for dropping off the laptop & accessories today Dick, they’ve now gone to our safe storage space
It’s the “Mayor and Cabinet” meeting tomorrow evening where we will be put forward as the preferred partner to run our library.
Myself & @Michael will be attending if anyone else wants to join us, none of us have requested to speak & this is a public meeting, so anyone can attend.
The meeting is at
Civic Suite
Town Hall
Catford
6pm
http://councilmeetings.lewisham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=139&MId=4248
Hey all
In the mist of this meeting tomorrow, just posting this.
I won’t ever say I’m not worried about the decision that will be made tomorrow because I am being very optimistic
I hope the decision made is the right one
Can’t help being scared about this.
#WontSleepTonight #Community #NeedToDoThis #HellYeah #CauseWeCan #ScaredWeDontGetTheChance
Well in other words all I’m saying is that I’m scared shitless about the outcome & hope we as a group can save our library.
Nothing more or nothing less, guess we’ll find out tomorrow guys, but for me no sleep tonight but I don’t need it anyway
We have a library to run
At the Mayor & Cabinet meeting tonight it was agreed that our community partnership will be running our library
Amazing!!! 
Well done @Pauline, @Michael and @V22 !!! I’m sure we’ll have lots more to discuss on the topic over the next few days, months and years!
Thanks for the support Chris & all other members of this forum, we’ll no doubt have lots to discuss for what we intend to be the best community library we can possibly create
Wow well done to all inbolvd
Congratulations to you all, a fantastic local success story in the face of possible closure.
Hahaha, I just had a look on #TOSS to see what’s going on over there & someone was asking what’s happened in the end with the library. They’ve then asked if I was still involved as it had gone a bit quiet from me.
This was then posted by another “I think you may find P1971 has abandoned this forum and is posting elsewhere”
Good on @robin.orton
Surely people on there must be wondering why it’s gone so quiet?
I clearly need to do a bit more outreach so we can encourage the best of them to share in our conversations here. Decker, Devonish Forester, Absolutely and 152047 have all made some good posts on TOSS, and I don’t think they signed up here (although some TOSSe… ahem TOSSites have moved here under different names, so it could be they’re here already)
What does TOSS stand for?
The owner of the other SE23 site does not want that site mentioned by name here. If you type in the name it will be censored by the automatic software here (at his request, not ours). TOSS stands for The Other Similar Site.
Thanks, Rachael. Sounds a bit rude though.
Somehow I’ve only just seen this, but CONGRATULATIONS and thank you!!
My girlfriend and I visited a couple of weeks ago (pre-holiday), and said how awful it is that it’s closing. Little did we know that you’d already won the bid!
In fairness it wasn’t Rachael’s idea. Just a handy acronym that fit the words neatly, that’s all 
It wasn’t intended that way Robin, the initials each stand for a word so you can probably work it out & none of the words are rude.
Thanks Phil, but I’m only one of our group taking over the running of our library & the definite date is now 17th October. We’ll have some existing library staff working with us until the end of the year over the transition period
The rest of our group are also on here @V22_Louise_House @Michael @JohnRussell & @Simon
If anyone wants to share ideas with us please do here or email Michael michael@fhsoc.com or myself sugarmountain.info@gmail.com
We want the whole community to have an input on what is added to the library & a SE23.Life member has already private messaged then emailed me with a suggestion
We’re building a website at the moment, setting up social media accounts, working on the “friends of FH library” group & an initial crowdfunder & lots more stuff
All of us are prepared to give this our all & want to increase the service for users as much as we possibly can
Nice just worked out that way @robin.orton
Think I know who “Townleygreen” might be!
And if I’ve got it wrong I’m sure @Michael will know, it’s a volunteer from Sydenham library & we’ve had a meeting with them
I also used to enjoy reading “Red67” s posts and “ForestHillier” & “Samuelsen”
Very glad we’ve got “Mr Numbers” on here!
ETA (edited to add) it’s the lovely @AndyS
