Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR MIKE
BONE AND
MR RICHARD
CHISNELL
9 JUNE 2008
Q80 Chair: Could I go back to your
suggestion about business rate relief? Again, would you be suggesting
that the local councils should make good the loss effectively,
or that central government should do that?
Mr Chisnell: I think we would
prefer central government to carry the charge on this because
if we are to satisfy people's toileting needs, with increasing
numbers of visitors in the run-up to the Olympics—and I
know we all keep talking about that but there will be a run-up
and there will be a lot more visitors in all parts of Britain,
not just London—then I think Government has a part to play
in ensuring that the visitors go away not only impressed by Britain
but also by the availability of toilets.
Q81 John Cummings: Do you think that
the shift towards community schemes is allowing local authorities
to escape their responsibilities in the provision of public conveniences?
Mr Chisnell: That is the rub and
the most important point of this initiative, which we applaud.
We have sung the praises of Richmond and others and they are not
the first—the Highland Comfort Scheme in Scotland has been
going for 15 years, Brighton has had a similar scheme for some
years and other authorities are looking at it increasingly—but
our worry is that local authorities will see this as an opt-out,
partly because of the ageing stock or the lack of availability.
A lot of public toilets provided in Victorian times are in the
wrong position for today's society and they do not have the facilities.
You can hardly get a twin buggy into any of them, and that is
not really suitable for a 21st century Britain, and they do not
have family facilities and inclusive facilities for those with
special needs, so there are certainly opportunities for more community
toilet schemes and we would support that and applaud and advise
any council to go down that route. Because they are open longer,
pubs and some night clubs would be suitable, but it has to be
driven. Our concern is that the Richmond scheme is unique in that
someone has been dedicated to developing it over the last two
or three years. Businesses come and go. There is a cost to every
council who introduces a community toilet scheme, not only in
possible remuneration to the participants through a subsidy towards
consumable or cleaning costs but also in managing it and ensuring
that the toilets are up to standard. A coachload of visitors will
not be able to get into the local pub or café to use the
toilet.
Q82 John Cummings: Do you have any
research to indicate whether people are likely to feel safer and
more comfortable using the toilet in a shopping centre or in a
department store than they would a public toilet?
Mr Chisnell: Yes, they do. We
have not done specific research but all the anecdotal evidence
and questions we have asked over the years when we have met and
talked to people is that, of course, we all feel safer going into
the pub or the shopping centre because they are managed buildings.
The problem with most public toilets is they are in unmanaged
buildings and people are worried about what is going on in there
and the antisocial behaviour which seems to be so prevalent in
modern Britain.
Q83 Anne Main: Do you know of anywhere
in the world, any country, which operates a public toilet system
that you would say we could emulate?
Mr Chisnell: Yes. McClean in Switzerland.
They are in stations. They have even altered the signage on the
concourses now to "McClean WC", and I would urge the
Committee to take a daytrip to Zurich or Basel.
Q84 Anne Main: That sounds wonderful,
but who is McClean?
Mr Chisnell: McClean is a commercial
company where the authorities in Switzerland, the rail authorities
in this case and I know municipal authorities are trying to get
them to participate as well, take over the running of the whole
facility on a 25 or 30 year lease and after every cubicle is used
it is serviced.
Q85 Anne Main: But that is in stations.
Do they operate in the town anywhere?
Mr Chisnell: They are now beginning
to be used and provide a service to some of the main municipalities
in Switzerland and, we hope, Germany. We have been trying to persuade
them to come to Britain but we have not been able to persuade
any authority.
Q86 Anne Main: But if there are local
authorities who are fighting shy of this on a lot of occasions,
quite rightly because I have been a councillor and it is a very
costly exercise and quite often you end up with a building that
no one wants to use anyway because it is so horrid, is there somewhere
getting it right with a template we could look to? Or are you
saying that so far even that has not been rolled out? This is
a global problem, by the sound of it.
Mr Chisnell: Well, I would point
you to East Lothian. We have a premier league of authorities in
Britain, for example, East Lothian and Westminster. Over 15 million
people use Westminster's 28 public toilets, and if they were not
there where on earth would they go? We have 14 million visitors
on the South Bank of the Thames a year, and no public toilets.
Q87 Chair: Can I pursue the subject
of McClean? A major reason why local authorities are giving up
on loos is that they are very expensive, we have been through
all this, and you cannot charge people enough to pay the costs
and if you do they do not use them, which defeats the whole object,
so how come a private contractor can make a profit? Which presumably
they do since they are not a philanthropic organisation.
Mr Chisnell: Well, as far as we
are aware they have some ground authority in terms of capital
expenditure to start with, but after that the facilities are managed
totally by the contractor. In the McCleans case some years ago
they were charging 80p for a cubicle and people were flocking
to use it and, as I say, they had to alter the toilet signage
on the concourse to "McClean WC" because people were
saying: "Where is the McClean?"
Q88 Chair: So 80p?
Mr Chisnell: It may be more than
that by now; I have not checked for a year or two. The point is
it is very popular with the users because people expect high standards
of everything in life today, and are prepared to pay 80p. It is
50p for a urinal.[1]
Q89 Mr Olner: Just quickly on that, how
does the cost of an operation like the one run by McClean, and
also that of JC Decaux which is very similar, compare to what
a local authority would want to contribute to a community toilet?
Mr Chisnell: We are talking about
two different approaches—
Q90 Mr Olner: We are, but one is
more expensive, very much more so, than the other.
Mr Chisnell: Well, the leasing
out and the revenue charging, the contracting out of toilet facilities,
is often at no cost to the local authority because the contractor
is given advertising sites. You can have a public toilet for free
in return for advertising.
Q91 Mr Olner: So it can only work
with advertising backing it up?
Mr Chisnell: No, it works in other
ways as well. The Healthmatic contract with Cotswold is a £1
million contract to upgrade 19 public conveniences over three
years, and that is working well; some of the toilets in Bourton-on-the-Water
are very good quality, up to the level of the visitor experience
in other respects, and the Council is due to gain some financial
payback for these facilities before the end of the contract. So
there are various ways of skinning this contracting-out cat, and
some of the BTA members, half a dozen of them, are now practising
the turnkey operation because they are specialists. We do not
expect local authorities to know how to run public toilets; all
we do is expect them to provide a service to the public.
Q92 Anne Main: Just thinking about
the 80p—and it sounds like a pound a pee and I can see the
headlines now—our concerns are that some people cannot afford
a pound a go, particularly if they have several children with
them, and also that they will just go and pee up someone's front
door. So are you saying this would run in tandem with some form
of free provision? What is in place over there that stops the
competition, so to speak, of free provision for people who cannot
afford the money, and your McCleans Rolls-Royce pound-a-pee provision?
Mr Chisnell: That is a very relevant
issue because not everyone will pay, and the one problem we have
with charging for toilets is that there is a certain section of
society who cannot afford to pay and, therefore, will go where
they feel they can get away with it, which is not helpful, obviously,
for the hygiene of the place in question. There is no easy solution.
We do really have a two-tier toilet service. We did a big study
for the South Bank. There are a lot of lovely toilets along the
South Bank, we know them all very well now, in all the theatres,
the National Film Theatre—you name it, they are there, there
are probably plenty, but they will not put signs up. There is
only one finger sign on the whole of the South Bank to Bankside
but they have been shut for three years and they still have not
taken the sign down, and this was three years ago, so that is
how important people think toileting is, sadly. But there is a
need, and we suggest that certain portions of the South Bank should
have a free public toilet because that way anyone who needs to
go should be able to go, and these would need to be funded by
the main buildings along the South Bank that have jurisdiction
over that patch of land, if you like. The reason they will not
put up finger signs, we understand, is they do not want to attract
everybody into their premises to use the toilet. 95% of us can
get away with it without being questioned, but there are people
less fortunate than ourselves and we have to satisfy their needs
as well.
Q93 Anne Main: So you do envisage
running a tandem system of a Rolls-Royce service and a free service,
can I put it that way?
Mr Chisnell: Yes. That is market
segmentation, and in most aspects of life that is the norm. The
reason we, MPs and councillors—and we know because we get
lots of calls from them—of all parties are so frustrated,
and users and residents are frustrated, is because we get one
toilet fits all, and that is not the way of the modern world!
Q94 Chair: Can I pick up an additional
point about the community toilet schemes? We are going to visit
Richmond tomorrow but, if a community toilet is in a pub, for
example, are there not some sections of the population that might
feel a bit wary and unhappy about going into a pub? For some women,
particularly some members of the ethnic minorities, for example,
it would not really be a public toilet because they would feel
really unhappy about going in there.
Mr Chisnell: That is a big issue,
yes. I do believe that people feel nervous about going into buildings
even if there is a sign outside saying: "You are welcome,
come into our premises". Once they get in there is a warm
welcome and they are not as unfriendly as people might think.
One has to say that the toilets in these community toilet schemes
are, as for cafes and pubs, not necessarily equipped to the public
toilet standards that we would like to see, so there are limitations,
but there are also advantages in terms of their opening hours,
as I have said, and their signage and availability, so they have
positive advantages. But a lot of people, I agree, would be concerned
about using a pub to go to the toilet. It is a cultural thing
and it is going to take a while. It is a bit like a lot of people
do not like using an automatic public convenience. Is the door
going to open? Are you going to get showered upon? These are real
issues, but they are modern ones.
Q95 Chair: Can I ask about anti-social
behaviour? If we think about Zurich, I do not want to run down
a delightful city but it does have a bit of a problem certainly
with high levels of drug-taking, which is one of the issues about
unattended public toilets. Do you have evidence of how serious
that is within unattended public toilets, and how much it is just
used as an excuse, that and other anti-social behaviour?
Mr Bone: There is obviously the
question of people committing sex crimes in toilet, which we know
about; there are people taking drugs in toilets; and there are
lesser crimes like graffiti and people generally abusing toilets,
and where they are unattended and in locations where they are
covered from view, badly lit, with no security and so on, there
is going to be a problem. The answer is to look at prevention
of this sort of activity rather than close toilets because you
have a problem, so we would advocate that toilets should be well
lit, attended if possible, and there should be signs telling people
what will happen to them if they do abuse the toilets, which you
do not very often see. Use of CCTV has been used very satisfactorily
in lots of places to cut down dramatically people abusing toilets.
Q96 Chair: Presumably not actually
in the cubicles?
Mr Bone: Oh, yes, it can be used
inside as well. Providing it is not trained on the urinals and
providing it shows people coming in and going out, that is quite
a deterrent. In fact, very close to here there is a toilet with
CCTV, people probably do not realise it but it has CCTV in it,
and that does deter a lot of people.
Q97 Chair: But not if they just want
to use the loo for what it is intended?
Mr Chisnell: No.
Q98 Chair: The other issue is the
Disability Discrimination Act. Anecdotally it has been suggested
that this is another excuse by local authorities who say: "We
cannot upgrade it to make it compatible with the Act so we will
close it down". Do you have evidence of that?
Mr Bone: We do. The DDA applies
as a standard to new buildings and refurbished building, not to
existing facilities, so if a council is closing an existing facility
that does not comply that is not a true case. What we would like
to encourage councils to do, obviously, is to upgrade and improve
toilets to the DDA standard completely, but there are lots of
other things they can do. For example, for poorly-sighted people
they can paint the walls so that the hand rails in the facilities
are white ones that stand out against the coloured background.
That does not cost a lot of money. They can put some rails up
which does not cost a lot of money, so there are quite a few things
that can be done at very little expense if people have the will
to improve disabled facilities without pulling them down and starting
again.
Mr Chisnell: We did alert Sir
Bert Massie some years ago to this problem. We were getting a
lot of calls from councillors and others saying toilets were being
closed, and press coverage, of course, on matters lavatorial is
very keenly followed in all areas of Britain, and they put out
a press release saying that non-compliance of a disabled facility
is no excuse to shut the whole facility, but I am afraid many
were lost because of that.
Q99 Mr Olner: Could we come back
to the gender issue in the current provision of public toilets?
From your own evidence, women need more public toilets than men,
and use them for a wider range of reasons than men. How do we
address that problem? There is talk about urinals, and French
ones for men in town centres and one thing and another, but that
obviously does not adequately facilitate the needs of women.
Mr Chisnell: No, it does not,
and CCTV footage, I gather, confirms that in many town centres
at night. The Urilift or the pop-up urinals do have a role to
play, and the other forms of male urinals at night-time or weekends
are saving thousands of gallons of foul-smelling liquid pouring
down many of London and other city's streets.
1 Note by witness: the current charge for a McClean
toilet (male and female) is SFr 1.50, which I think equates to
just under 80p. Back
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