Morning:
9°c
Businesses urged to open lavatories to public
12.08.08
Boris Johnson today called on pubs, cafÈs and shops to open their lavatories to the public to help ease the problems caused by the lack of public facilities.
The Mayor wants every borough to sign up to the Community Toilet Scheme, which provides businesses with grants of up to £1,000 a year to open their lavatories to the public and is already running successfully in Richmond and Camden.
Mr Johnson said: "This scheme is a common-sense and costeffective solution to the lack of public lavatories in London. It is also an ingenious way around the high costs normally associated with running them.
"In the longer term, however, I want the Government to provide local authorities with more funding for essential services."
Since 1999 London has seen the highest rate of decline in the number of local authority lavatories in the country.
Charities say the lack of facilities is a particular problem for the elderly, disabled people and families with young children.
Reader views (2)
I believe local authorities must provide public toilets,here in Wimbledon there are none! Nor do we have the scheme Boris is calling for...So I applaud Boris's scheme but feel that local authorities failing to provide this necessary provision should reduce the council tax. Actually it is a disgrace and the government should make money available,if councils say they don't have the funds! Bring back the public loo!
- Jean, London England
Be careful what you wish for, Boris:
Here in Waltham Forest the Council, ever eager to showcase the latest gimmick (we got one of those awful giant screens in record time) while neglecting its basic duties, has signed up a couple of dozen bars and restaurants to this scheme. No bad, thing, you say: what it has also done, unbelievably, is use this as an excuse to demolish all the purpose-built public lavatories, some of them only a few years old, paid for with our money.
Amazingly, Councils have a power, but not a duty, to provide public facilities; a few years ago the Audit Commission found our local loos 'well-run and value for money', but of course they only work when properly staffed. The Council left them unstaffed, and used the inevitable squalor and misbehaviour as a reason to close them.
An outsourced service is a service out of public control:recently a local pub in the scheme closed for a month without warning, leaving an area unprovided for. I have been trying to find out what obligation is placed on the participants to stay in the scheme for a period of time ( we can all imagine incidents which would deter a business from continuing to take part) , but the Council is very reluctant to give an answer. We now have large parks without lavatories, even for the staff.This is an unglamorous but key public service - there is no community life in the absence of sanitation - so don't try and do it on the cheap.
- Mdj, Leyton, London
