Public Toilets - An essential public service

Public Toilets

It is often quoted that a councillor’s life is all about potholes, dog poo, and bins.  These are everyday issue that concern many residents and get in the way of their lives.

Today my issue is Public Toilets.  I have learnt over my years as a councillor more than I would like to know about both public toilets and our sewage system.  However, I don’t yet have answers to the questions of how to cover the costs and how many Public Toilets does a town need?

Or perhaps I do – we cover the costs with difficulty, and we always need a few more than we have.

Public toilets are not a statutory obligation for local authorities.  That means that councils are not required by law to provide them, and as they are expensive, they are often targeted for cuts – if you just focus on the public accounts.

But Public Toilets are an absolutely essential feature of our community spaces.  Without them very many of us would be unable to go out.  From my youth I recall on long journeys across country to visit relatives (before motorway services existed) my mother would plan the trip based on where we could stop for the public toilets.

The provision of toilets is one of the issues that come down to value rather than cost.  The value of Public Toilets is impossible to calculate in cash terms, but they really are valued by those that need them.  Cost only looks at money, but value in social worth can be far more than the monetary cost.

Which opens the question, what do we want our councils to do?  Reductions in government funding and the legal requirement to balance budgets has driven a lot of councils to look for how to raise money.  Some councils cut back services to minimise costs. Some councils think of themselves as commercial entities, and some councils continue to strive to balance the different pressures as best they can.

I see public toilets as a measure of the values of a council and the importance that they place on social value.  Whilst there may be exceptions in particular situation, to me the closure of public toilets is a sign of failure.  Councils exist to provide essential services that cannot or should not be commercially provided, and to add social value to their area. 

As central Government is getting interested in Public Toilets for all the wrong reasons, and even talking of a Public Toilet Tsar, they continue to misunderstand.  If they want to make a big difference they should make the provision of Public Toilets a statutory duty for local councils and provide the funding to do so.

The current Government continues to see financial value in the increasing privatisation in our society, be that water companies, dentists or increasingly the wider NHS.  I haven’t seen many examples of private companies providing Public Toilets.  That of course leaves Councils as a key provider of community services, delivering social value such as Public Toilets – and long may they stay open!