By John F Crawford

THERE has been a lot of media concern in recent week about North Ayrshire Council’s decision to save some £36,000 per annum by closing public conveniences on Arran, an island whose economy depends a lot on tourism.

Councils have had statutory powers to provide public conveniences since the turn of the 19th century, but that was in the days when many workers had to use public transport to and from work and were away from home for long periods. Over the years the expectations of the public have changed and the priority for public toilets in the last three decades has been provision for shoppers and visitors with access for the disabled, parent and baby facilities. The original public conveniences (many built between the wars) became out of date.

Councils then began to build new facilities to address these demands. But it was expensive and problematical. Public attitudes towards the new units had changed dramatically: no longer were these seen as an essential part of local infrastructure but instead became a regular target for vandals (a new toilet block opened in Hurlford, Ayrshire in 1996 only lasted a week before it was wrecked). Councils could therefore either build new toilets that were designed to be “unbreakable” or employ full-time attendants to keep out undesirables who saw the new facilities as their playground. So the cost of building and running public conveniences rocketed. There were exceptions however: the former Badenoch & Strathspey Council’s facility on the A9 at Ralia in the 1990s was an excellent example of a modern unattended facility.

Around 30 years ago a French company introduced automatic public conveniences that provided a cleaning cycle after every usage. These weren’t cheap and came with a long-term leasing/ownership arrangement but cost less to operate than an attended facility. A major issue at the time was how to pitch the entrance fee, with options being 2p, 5p, or 10p. The vision of a young parent with two or three “desperate” kids prompted some councils to fix the entry fee at 2p, which made little contribution to the unit’s running costs. But the units worked and four were installed on Arran around 1990. These have since reached the end of their contract life and have been removed.

As is the nature of local government, whenever expenditure cuts are called for, many directors select options that they think will cause most embarrassment for the councillors in the hope that they’ll somehow escape the cuts (in actual fact it never works: witness the decimation of our parks, libraries and swimming pools over the years) so it’s no surprise that the toilets on Arran were flagged up for closure as potential “savings”, hence the outcry. It’s doubtful if the concerns of the islanders and their supporters will be heeded given that they “share” their councillors with an area that’s part of Ardrossan and even at that, the political power in the council centres around the Irvine area.

But there’s actually another option. In 1994 Inverness District Council found it couldn’t fund proposed extensions to its network of public toilets over an area of 1100 sq miles as they’d hoped. So council staff went round the areas scheduled for new toilets and looked for pubs, restaurants and hotels that had signs “our toilets are for the sole use of patrons” suggesting there was a local need for a public facility. They approached the proprietors with a deal that if the public were allowed to use their toilets, the council would pay to upgrade these to accommodate disabled users and parents and babies. The council would also pay them an annual sum to assist with the running costs of consumables, cleaning materials and heating, repair, maintenance and so on. The only condition was that they had to erect a sign (“Public Toilets”), keep these open for public use during their normal opening hours, and sign up for a 10-year period. The council could now have public toilets, attended, inspected and maintained for a fraction of the cost of building and operating new facilities. The first few proprietors to get involved afterwards reported improved business as many people often were tempted to stay for a drink or a meal after using the toilets.

It might be the solution for Arran but it still has capital and revenue expenditure ramifications that the council would have to address. And of course a council (and its employees) committed to maximising the tourist potential of the island.

*John Crawford spent more than four decades working in the Scottish waste management industry.By John F Crawford