Consultation outcome

Government response to a consultation on the Public Lending Right rate per loan for the Scheme Year 2024/25

Updated 8 January 2026

1. Introduction and background

The Public Lending Right (PLR) is a right for authors and other rights holders to receive payments from a central fund in relation to public lending of their books in the UK. For the PLR Scheme year 2024/25 the PLR applied to the lending of books, audiobooks, e-books and e-audiobooks, as well as the remote lending of e-books and e-audiobooks from public library services.

The British Library Board makes an annual recommendation to the Secretary of State for a change to the rate per loan to be paid from the PLR fund to registered authors, illustrators and other contributors to compensate them for the loan of their books from public libraries. To establish a basis for these payments the British Library’s PLR office collects loans data from a representative sample of public libraries throughout the UK, which in accordance to the PLR Scheme is then ‘grossed up’ by PLR region using national loan figures (obtained directly from library authorities) to produce a national loans estimate for each book/audio book/e-book registered for PLR. The total registered loans figure is divided into the money available for distribution from the PLR fund, making the necessary adjustments to apply PLR’s minimum and maximum payment thresholds, to provide a rate per loan.

This means when estimated loans go up, the rate per loan adjusts down; and when estimated loans go down, the rate per loan adjusts up. Therefore as the estimated number of total loans in 2024/25 was lower than the total loans in 2023/24 there is an increase in the PLR rate per loan.

Following the recommendation this year from the British Library Board, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) undertook a public consultation to seek the views of key stakeholders and those in the sector with an interest.

2. The consultation

DCMS ran a four-week public consultation (13 October to 7 November 2025) on the British Library Board’s recommendation to set the rate per loan at 12.40 pence for the PLR Scheme year 2024/25 (an increase from 11.76 pence per loan in the previous year). The consultation was made available on GOV.UK. An email was also sent directly to 15 organisations, representative of authors, public libraries and other key public library sector stakeholders in the UK, as well as the Devolved Governments to notify them of the publication of the consultation.

Overall DCMS received 18 responses to the consultation (12 stakeholder organisations, three Devolved Governments, two authors registered for PLR and one librarian).

Of this total, 13 responses were provided via online survey. Nine survey respondents indicated they strongly or somewhat agree with the recommendation, while two indicated they neither agree or disagree. The remaining two indicated they somewhat or strongly disagree. In addition, five other responses to the consultation were received by email. Of these responses, three indicated they strongly or somewhat agree with the recommendation, while the remaining two did not respond to the consultation question using the options available, but indicated that they either support or welcome the recommendation. Devolved Governments indicated that they either strongly or somewhat agree with the recommendation.

The government notes the overall positive support for the proposal and intends to proceed to introduce the necessary amendment to the PLR Scheme.

A number of those who responded to the consultation also took the opportunity to raise other more general points about PLR and support for public libraries. The government notes these comments. However, they do not fall in scope of this consultation.