Lack of public toilets. (not Trans/GC related)

That's very true IrmaFayLear. I've never been in a position where a nominal payment like that would be an issue. The problem is squaring the circle of paying for facilities on a user basis but not excluding those for whom the payment is not nominal.

And anti social behaviour in public toilets is because there have been so many cuts to places where people, especially young people could get together and do something more positive, eg youth clubs, sports centres
Sorry, not buying that excuse.

Frankly I would pay £1 (and I'm not particularly flush (pardon the pun!)) to use a clean public toilet with attendant when necessary. To me that would be absolutely worth it. People complain about paying for anything, but to feel comfortable and safe at one's most vulnerable - £1 would be cheap at the price.

Maintaining public lavatories is costly and people abuse them. That said it’s an absolute disgrace that a country that introduced public lavatories as a significant step forward in improving health now has so few.
It would actually be cheaper in the longer term to have lavatories and to employ attendants to keep them hygienic and used appropriately. It would generate employment, a small charge could be levied (although no longer could we ‘spend a penny’), there’d be less need to cleanse our streets and alleyways.
A lack of public facilities affects so many. The disabled, parents, pregnant women, women with heavy periods or urgency, those with IBS, men with prostate problems, teenagers who can’t pop into a pub.
Absolute disgrace that cuts have impacted so much on everyday needs.

You could use your home toilet

And anti social behaviour in public toilets is because there have been so many cuts to places where people, especially young people could get together and do something more positive, eg youth clubs, sports centres.

Ha ha ha. Diddums! No youth club so it's perfectly understable to vandalise a public toilet

One of my jobs is leaflet distribution, which is 6-8 hour shifts, usually in residential areas. Finding a loo can be a real problem. My list of potential places:
Petrol stations
Weatherspoons
Libraries
Medical centres or hospitals (a lot of them you can just walk in and find a loo)
Crematoria or graveyards (not to wee on anyone's ancestors but graveyards often have loos for the sake of people who like to visit the family grave and/or people attending burials)
Leisure centres
McDonalds
Betting shops
Big supermarkets (a bit hit and miss)

But I appreciate that not all of these will work for anyone who has small DC with them.

And anti social behaviour in public toilets is because there have been so many cuts to places where people, especially young people could get together and do something more positive, eg youth clubs, sports centres.

Although think the reason for closure is actually cost-cutting, but anti-social behaviour in public toilets is a problem.

It's difficult to blame councils for lack of provision when the reason for closure is disgusting members of the public.

Yes I agree. Wouldn't it be great if people could just not be dicks.

Fortunately our favourite social justice warrior is on the case:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/public-toilets-council-cuts

If the local authority didn't want to pay for public loos they could have made it a condition of the planning permission that the operator had to provide them. It's just cost cutting by the operator to avoid paying for maintenance and cleaning.

I find the idea of building a bus station without loos criminal. What are you supposed to do after a long bus journey?

I must admit I google "toilets" before going somewhere for peace of mind.

It's difficult to blame councils for lack of provision when the reason for closure is disgusting members of the public. You would need full-time attendants in every public lavatory in order to ward off people who are not there for the proper reason. Public toilets are magnets for drug users and men who like public sex. In this day and age it's not illegal so go to your own home/hotel.

There were some very nice public toilets in the village hall where I used to live. One week, waiting to go in to the hall to have ds weighed, I noticed various men in the car park, who were following each other in to the gents. I reported it to the parish council office, and was told breezily, "Oh, it's winter. They'll move to the conker field in the summer." !!! What if you had an older (say 9 or 10-year-old) son who needed a wee?

And I know we're not on the dreaded trans subject, but given the self-id threat, women's public toilets would be fair game for a false self-id-er who could lurk inside to their heart's content.

Many of the public loos in our town, especially those in parks, have been closed because they have either been totally vandalised to the point of being unusable, or have become notorious for drug taking and dealing.its a real problem....w

We have a local park with a beautiful play area - but no loos at all. DD2 has continence issues - generally she can be OK for a period but then things will flare up and she'll be doubly reduced-continent for a while until we get medication readjusted. She's having one of those periods at the moment and while, when she was a toddler I'd just take a million changes of clothes and go in the baby change, now I can't do that easily so we've been confined to the house.

Few*

My dd won't wee in public. We went to the local woods with some friends. They had sons who all were fine going behind a bush but my dd wouldn't do it, despite being desperate. I had to take her home in the end. All the kids were around the same age - 3/4.

We are fortunate that in our town centre there is a shopping centre and a supermarket which both have toilets including a family/baby change one. There's no public toilet that I am aware of.

My dp has IBS and the urge to go to the toilet comes on very suddenly and unexpectedly. I can think of a view occasions that we have been out and had to go on a mad hunt around for a toilet for him. They are not always easy to find and public ones are definitely scarce.

What I dont understand is that so many town centres are struggling to survive, so you would think one of the things that local businesses might do is get together and set up the scheme that happens in parts of London and elsewhere to say if you are shopping locally you are welcome to use our toilets.

Maybe a mumsnet campaign across smaller towns?

Shouldn't be that tourist towns are able to do this, but other towns aren't.

But on the other hand a small girl in an emergency will find it far easier to emulate the ease a small boy can deal with this if she is wearing a skirt, rather than trousers.

I have had to wee in the garden when locked out as a child (had to wait in garden for parent to get home). As a child I was in school uniform, which was a skirt (summer, so a knee-length lightweight gathered thing). I had to juggle keeping my pants out the way with keeping my skirt out of the way, and not falling over or weeing on my feet. The best way was to pull the pants crotch forward, and the skirt forward and over to one side, so I could hold it with the other hand ie. my bum was out, just as much as it would be in trousers. The only advantage is that it's marginally easier to squat when you don't have trousers keeping your knees more together.

It's not as easy as you seem to think to wee in a skirt - they're not generally netted, tent-like affairs.

Not that any of this is the point.

They're closing them because they don't have the funds to clean them. Yet again, women suffer from austerity.

I found this web site: pee.place/en it shows the location or rather lack of public toilets in the UK. It even covers other countries

Just came back to say what is important on a thread like this is learning about the lived experience of others. So if you are managing your own or a child's health issue perhaps best to listen and wonder how we might deal with it, but not assume we know better.

Remember an occassion going out with my mother who had had to accept being in a wheel chair and being told by a mother with 2 small children my mother should wait while they used the disabled toilet as the queue for the ladies was too long. She was too old fashioned and polite not to object but it turned into a very distressing situation.

On a totally different point I remember reading a thread on facebook about shewees (portable female urinals) and just thought what's this all about. But a quick google shows there are any number of these, and maybe some women are now thinking the lack of public toilets means it might be better to have one just in case?!

I am feeling very lucky to report that we have two sets of public toilets in our small town. Also, lots of pubs/bars/cafes do have 'use our loo' stickers in their windows.
Mind you, we are very near the coast and get a fair few visitors/holidaymakers.
And then I also remember that our council tax is ferociously high.

I was about to say people should take a protest shit on the town hall steps but like many others we've lost our nearest town hall.
In January we are about to lose the bus, so no public transport for village, 3 miles down unpaved lanes to the nearest shops.
I suppose we could always take a shit in a hedge.