‘Where’s the progress?’: Questions over public toilet reopening plans

Questions have been raised over the speed and level of investment in plans to reopen public toilets in Newport.

Cllr Matthew Evans said the matter is “not difficult to sort out”, and argued better provision was needed to reflect the council’s ambitions for the city centre.

Earlier this year, cabinet members confirmed they would spend £15,000 on exploring the reopening of public toilets, as part of “bread and butter” budget proposals that focused on residents’ key issues.

“I questioned the costs at the time – because £15,000 was what the council said it would save closing the public toilets in Caerleon (in 2018),” said Cllr Evans, who leads the Conservative opposition group in Newport.

“Clearly you’ve got to find a lot more money than that. It’s woefully inadequate. Where’s the progress?” he asked.

Local Conservative campaigner Michael Enea has called the project a “mystery” and claimed other councils across Britain had spent sums ranging from £60,000 to £400,000 on building or reopening public toilets.

He also expressed surprise there was not more detail on public toilets in the city centre’s new placemaking plan, which the council recently unveiled.

A Newport City Council spokesperson said the funding set aside in this year’s budget, for the proposal to reopen public toilets, was “sufficient”.

“Plans are progressing and further details will be made available when those are finalised”, the spokesperson said, before noting there are public toilets available in “several city centre locations including Friars Walk and the Kingsway Centre, as well as some other businesses, and in venues across the city”.

The spokesperson also said councils “do not have a statutory duty to provide public conveniences, but we do provide them in many of our buildings and parks”.

However, Cllr Evans called public toilet provision a “necessity” and said he had “lost count of how many” public toilets have closed in Newport.

He argued the council should “start” its plans to reopen some sites by looking at the commercial centre.

He said: “The city centre functions 24 hours a day, and we need to provide that service 24 hours a day.”

The council said providing public toilets comes “with an ongoing cost for maintenance and cleaning, and that would be significant if they were open 24 hours a day”.

“We will continue to monitor the situation in relation to public toilets more generally,” the council spokesperson added.

Cllr Evans also suggested developers could be compelled to build public toilets on some sites, as part of conditions attached to planning permission.

“It’s quite easy to put as a planning condition, and something that should be an easy way of dealing with the issue – a quick win”, he claimed, adding: “The population is growing, we need to provide essential services.”