Although public toilets across the UK seem to be an endangered species, with more and more such public conveniences being shut down over the past few months due to budget cuts, there are also a few exceptions to be found, here and there, and that’s also the case with Woodley, in Wokingham, Berkshire.
Councils shutting down public toilets or transferring their operation to private parties and businesses has already become somewhat of a familiar situation across the UK, and that’s exactly the case in Pembrokeshire as well, since almost a third of the public conveniences in this area could be operated by businesses or community organisations in the future, according to a
Public toilets at Low Bradfield, near Sheffield, are set to be reopen at the expense of the local council, a news report reveals.
The toilets were among 22 closed earlier this year due to budget cuts at Sheffield Council. However, as a result of concerns expressed by the businesses and community groups about the loss of the facilities in the village, the Bradfield Parish Council stepped in to save the public toilets in its area.
As more and more local councils across the UK are faced with the tough choice of either charging for access to the public toilets they manage or closing them altogether, it’s becoming quite clear that citizens who still want to actually keep using these public conveniences will unfortunately have to spend a few pence every time they do so.
Given the rather bad state of the council’s finances, all public toilets in Herefordshire are to be closed to save money, officials have revealed.
Apparently, the 25 toilets cost around 250,000 a year to maintain, which is a sum the council simply doesn’t afford to pay anymore. However, on the bright side, people will be able to use facilities at 14 shops, pubs and other businesses to have signed up for their Community Toilet Scheme instead.
With more and more public toilets across the UK being closed due to the significant budget cuts local authorities are faced with, it shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise that the task of trying to keep them open has been passed down to the people who actually need to use them on a daily basis.
Budget cuts for local authorities across the UK are starting to take quite a serious toll on a lot of the non-essential services these councils provide, with public toilets being among the first such services to be targeted.
And, in fact, that’s also the case with the town of Crewkerne, in Somerset, England, where members of the town council’s Amenities Committee discussed the takeover of the toilets from the district council, according to a news report.
People going for a night out in Buckingham will be shocked to find out that the doors to the town’s public toilets have been locked at 3pm this week, due to reports of vandalism and drug use in the facility.
Since there’s no such thing as a statutory duty for councils to fund public toilets, a very large number of such public conveniences have been shut down following recent Government cutbacks for local councils.
With the Commonwealth Games approaching fast, Glasgow is set to receive a huge number of tourists, but it seems that the city is confronted by a serious problem involving the number of available public toilets.