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Feb 2024

Last Updated: 16/02/2024

Locked public toilets causing great inconvenience in the afternoon

by John Grainger

| 18 Feb, 2024

The Stray Ponds public toilets.

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, but in parts of the Harrogate district it seems you can’t, unless you go early.

That’s because an apparent change in the cleaning regime has resulted in some toilets now being closed as early as three o’clock in the afternoon, causing problems for people caught short later in the day.

The Stray Ferret’s attention was drawn to the issue by a reader, who on condition of anonymity told us:

“I went to the toilets outside Crescent Gardens [in Harrogate] halfway through the afternoon and they were being locked up for the night. I was astonished. I was told the toilets around the district are now being closed from 2pm onwards.”

Sources at the council who also wished to remain anonymous confirmed the reader’s story. They told the Stray Ferret that a new cleaning regime had been put in place in October.

Where the district’s toilets are

According to North Yorkshire Council’s website, there are eight public toilets in Harrogate, five in Knaresborough, five in Nidderdale, four in Ripon, and one each in Masham and Ripley. All of them are listed as being open from 8am to 6pm from November to March, or till 8pm between April and October. The only exceptions are the toilets at Glasshouses, Middlesmoor and Ripley, which are open 24 hours a day.

Previously, all the toilets would be cleaned before being locked for the night, a process which started two hours before the final closure time. During the winter months, that meant that the earliest toilets to shut would be closed at around 4pm; during summer, at 6pm.

But according to our council sources, the new schedule has the cleaning rota starting at two o’clock, meaning that some toilets are shut for the night as early as 3pm. The last one, in Victoria car park next to Harrogate railway station, still shuts at 6pm.

‘No change’, says council

However, North Yorkshire Council denied that there had been any change to the cleaning or closing schedule. In a statement, Cllr Greg White, the council's executive member for managing our environment, told us:

“We understand the importance of our public conveniences to both residents and visitors and work hard to ensure they are available when and where they are required.

“Since the formation of North Yorkshire Council in April last year we have not implemented any policy changes and, as such, the service continues to be provided as it was previously.

“As with anything of this nature, there are occasions when individual sites will be required to close earlier than normal. This could be a result of vandalism, cleanliness or issues around staffing, for example. However, we try our best to avoid such situations and they are generally rare.”

Given the discrepancy between our sources’ accounts and the council’s official response, the Stray Ferret set out to find the truth and this week visited a selection of public toilets – including those at Oatlands, Starbeck and Stray Ponds – between 3.30pm and 4pm. We found them all shut, apparently confirming our sources’ claims. But, in common with the council's website, signs on the buildings claimed the toilets were open till 6pm.

The reader who contacted us said the new was regime was bad, but even the old schedule was not good enough. He said:

“It’s the principle of it. The town as a collective pays so much money in rates, and for visitors coming to the town, knowing that they’ve got public conveniences should be a given. They shouldn’t have to rely on popping into some shop or pub or whatever – it's not right.

“The question is: is Harrogate a five-hour-a-day town, or a 24-hour-a-day town? If we want to be an open and welcoming town, we need facilities that are open at least till eight o’clock. Personally, I think they should be open till 10 or 11 o’clock at night.”

Crisis point

According to the British Toilet Association, which campaigns for better toilet provision throughout the UK, the issue is fundamentally about human dignity.

Raymond Martin, managing director of the BTA, told us:

“As humans, we need to do five things: eat, drink, sleep, breath and go to the toilet. It’s not something we can choose not to do. When our bodies say ‘go to the toilet’, we need to go to the toilet.”

But he claimed the situation in Harrogate is symptomatic of a wider trend. He said:

“It’s understandable but unacceptable. There’s just no funding from central government to local authorities. In 2011, the government slashed council budgets by 20% in one austere sweep, and that was where we saw the biggest dip. In 2010, we know there were 6,687 registered public toilets in the UK, but by 2017 there were just 2,526. And the situation has reached crisis point since then. Thirty-seven councils have no public toilets whatsoever.”

‘Make people pay’

He said councils should rethink their approach to public toilets, and view them as a commercial entity. He said:

“The simple fact is that councils don’t have the money. So they could charge 20p or 40p to use the toilets – you have to pay for everything else, so why not? Or you could sell advertising space inside them, or reduce the number of cubicles and let out the space to a newspaper stand or a taxi company. There are ways of making toilets pay. At Manchester Piccadilly railway station, they charge 30p for the toilets and made £750,000 profit in a year!”

He said that providing and maintaining toilets to a high standard made good economic sense, helping to attract people into the town centre, especially those who were more likely to need access to a toilet at short notice.

These include young children, older people, pregnant women and people with a wide variety of medical conditions, such as prostate cancer, muscular dystrophy, Crohn’s disease, colitis and Alzheimer’s, among others.

He said:

“Toilets bring footfall and allow people with disabilities to come into the town centre – that’s the purple pound. And it allows older people who may have medical conditions to go shopping too – that's the grey pound. Without public toilets, town centres suffer as people vote with their feet.

“It might cost £5,000 to run and maintain a toilet block over a year, but actually, that toilet block could make more than that for the council. Toilets are a generator of money, not a drain on it.”

Minister of Poo

Mr Martin said that ultimately, the provision of toilets had been neglected because they had not been afforded the importance they were due.

Under the Public Health Act 1936, local authorities have a power, not a duty, to provide public toilets.

He said:

“The problem is that nobody has overall responsibility for toilets, so there’s no strategy. We really need a Department of Sanitation and Hygiene, as they have in France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, China, Australia and New Zealand.

“But nobody here wants to have anything to do with toilets – cleaning them, managing them, maintaining them – right up to the top level: nobody wants to be Minister of Poo.”

In the meantime, North Yorkshire Council said the situation would come under review as the integration process it started in April 2023 continued.

Cllr White said:

“As we move forward following local government reorganisation, we are keen to review our policy regarding public conveniences.

“While we work hard to provide facilities to a standard that the public would come to expect we will look at where we can improve the overall quality of the service offered.”

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