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

[youkiddingme]

Our local town has no public toilets. It has a market twice a week, a fair few shops, and is used by a lot of women and a lot of elderly people. We used to be able to use them in the town hall - but they are now roped off. We had a new bus station built not long ago and the council specified it must have no public toilets. Complaints are met with, 'we are not legally obliged to provide public toilets'. I really didn't know that. if you ask in the town you are told to go to one of the pubs, but as a lone disabled women going into a strange pub does not appeal, and what about women with children? I can't help wondering where all the people that are around town in the evening are weeing.

Got me googling and it looks like shutting loos altogether is quite a popular idea with councils. This is the most recent thing I could find with any figures and it's really depressing.

inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/uk-public-toilets-disappear-cuts/

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

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.

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

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.

Fortunately our favourite social justice warrior is on the case:

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

You could use your home toilet

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.

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.

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.

I used to be a driving instructor in London, and public toilets are indeed noticeable by their absence. I had the precious few carefully marked on my map, and I'd have to plan them into my day. I used McDonalds a lot - I'd never buy anything, most of them were busy enough that it was easy to sneak in. Supermarkets usually had them, petrol stations were hit and miss; they'd frequently be "out of order", or have the blue lights in the cubicles.

I often did ask my pupils if I could use their toilets after a lesson. Unthinkable on MN!

It is an interesting enigma that with our many advances in science and technology, the need to go to the toilet several times a day is one thing we haven't managed to crack, and that even the Queen has to use a bathroom like the rest of us. In a kids' book about space flight, I remember reading "astronauts can even go to the toilet as the space suit has a kind of nappy inside". How about special pants that we can all wear, which can be emptied at the end of the day?

@CherryPavlova As for our country introducing public lavatories and then having so few of them... we invented many things, which the rest of the world quickly did better than us. Football, railways, etc.

I used McDonalds a lot - I'd never buy anything, most of them were busy enough that it was easy to sneak in

I think that's really out of order. McDonald's toilets are safe and clean. I relied on them when my son was small, particularly if we were not in our home city. McDonald's food is very cheap. Their coffee is probably the cheapest take away you can buy. I don't think it is fair to expect them to provide toilets for nothing.

Oops, I forgot, Ronald McDonald is obviously very poor huge global corporation , like the cash-strapped councils who can't provide public toilets. All those who have ever used his toilets without purchasing his exquisite gourmet must now grovel before him, and spend time in the stocks pelted with big macs.

I think that's really out of order. McDonald's toilets are safe and clean. I relied on them when my son was small, particularly if we were not in our home city. McDonald's food is very cheap. Their coffee is probably the cheapest take away you can buy. I don't think it is fair to expect them to provide toilets for nothing.

If I bought a coffee in McDonald's, I'd be desperate for the loo again quite quickly!

The worst place I can think off for public toilets was Paris. We wandered round for ages, becoming increasingly desperate. Ds1 had earlier used an absolutely gross portaloo type thing next to the Eiffel Tower.

The euphemism used to be 'spend a penny' ... many public loos didn't used to be free in the past.

This infuriated me (potty trained 2 little ones this year and weak bladder after childbirth myself). Even our local library has NO toilets at all. They have all these toddler sessions and children’s sessions and elderly meet ups and until I pointed it out it didn’t occur to them that lack of a toilet might be a real barrier.

I was in my local shopping area, now a pedstrianised area, early this afternoon.

I saw a woman walking towards me rather awkwardly in track suit bottoms. She then stopped and pulled the elasticated waist out and peered down her stomach. The she put her hand in and pulled out a McDonalds polystyrene cup from between her legs.

She then poured the contents down a drain hole.

And funnily enough there is a new row of toilets just been installed in the hope to attract people back to the old high street.

But I suppose if you are living on the streets you dont have the small change that will get you into public toilets should they be there.

PantsyMcPantsface
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.
This. This is appalling, the way people are confined to the house by the lack of public conveniences (as they used to call them). All those sanctimonious people on here who think you can just go before you leave the house and then be OK all day, or survive a long bus journey, or maybe just wear a long skirt (FFS) - please try and put yourself in someone else's shoes for a second, eh?

I'm lucky: I'm OK and don't have IBS or a partner with Crohn's disease or a toddler or an elderly parent whose bladder is losing its capacity. I can afford to use a café or a pub if I find myself in extremis. But even I can see this is a huge problem, and it can cruelly confine people to the house. It's tragic that we have lost so much public provision. We need to campaign for legislation to make it mandatory.

What a ridiculous and irrelevant comment. McDonald's sells food. It's not there to provide free toilets. You do realise that in some branches they have introduced a code same as Starbucks et al? Entirely because of people abusing access to their toilets.