Examination of Witnesses (Questions 104-119)
BARONESS ANDREWS
OBE
9 JUNE 2008
Q104 Chair: Welcome, Baroness Andrews.
Can I start off by asking firstly, briefly, whether your view
is that local authorities are giving up, to a certain extent,
providing public toilets, and, secondly, whether it is the Department's
view that authorities should have a duty to provide toilets, or
whether you are more in favour of the line that the BTA were pushing,
that they should at least have to draw up a strategy?
Baroness Andrews: I do not think
they are giving up; I think it is not always easy. Having done
the strategy, and I should pay tribute to the partnership we had
with Richard and the BTA and others, we found there was real interest
and concern about what could be done, and I think there really
is a sense that certainly we have to do better as a country and
many local authorities are responding very proactively to that,
and you can see that from the sort of examples we give in the
guide. We are not in favour of a duty, not because we do not think
this is an important issue, I think it is an extremely important
national issue and it does really impact on the quality of people's
lives, and not because we have never had a duty, although there
has always been a discretionary element, but because we think
it is more effective if what is provided is locally determined
and owned and sustainable and, therefore, a source of local pride.
I would also say, I think, that the LGA is of that opinion otherwise
it would itself have taken a more corporate role here, but in
order to improve and sustain what we have, I think it is going
to be determined by what people need, for example, the Local Government
Act putting more emphasis on community voice with people saying
what they want in local community and the duty to involve, and
I think that is the direction to go in in order to put pressure
on local authorities and councils to do better.
Q105 Chair: One of the reasons why
local authorities may be loath to provide public toilets is they
are expensive facilities and often expensive to maintain, but
we also had evidence in our first session about the costs effectively
of not providing public toilets, and we have had mention again
today particularly in relation to the night-time economy of the
cleansing costs either for individuals or, indeed, for the councils
themselves the next morning if there is not any adequate provision.
It was also put to us last time that if you do not have adequate
public toilets there are sections of the community which are not
able to get out and use other local facilities or even spend money
in local shopping centres. Has the Department made any assessment
of those countervailing costs of not having public toilet provision?
Baroness Andrews: No, we have
not done any quantitative surveys or any economic surveys, and
I heard today some of the graphic implications of the night-time
economy, for example. What we tried to do in the guide was bring
together the qualitative evidence and comment which makes it perfectly
obvious that there is a huge benefit to the local economy and
local society in looking after and seeing toilets as very much
something to be proud of and positively something to draw attention
to. For example, the tourist economy is absolutely self-evident,
and this is a really important piece of evidence for the local
community to be able to point to. In terms of people who are shut
out of the local community, for instance the ageing population
and one which proportionately will be more disabled, it is appalling
they are not able to access a decent public toilet, and that is
certainly one of the priorities. Older people are consumers but
are producers as well, and they contribute to the local economy.
Q106 Mr Betts: I do not think anyone
is suggesting that a statutory duty would be framed in such a
way that you as Minister, or any minister, should have to sit
down and decide on the appropriateness of public toilet provision
in every local authority in the country. That, clearly, would
be ridiculous. On the other hand, we have a guide at present and
for all we know that guide could be sitting in the chief executive's
bottom drawer, never seeing the light of day. Should not there
be some requirement for each local authority to show that they
have looked at the guide and taken a view about it? It might be
they are going to do nothing but at least a report every year,
two or five years could be presented to the council about what
the plan for public toilet provision in the area is. Would that
not be something that could be done?
Baroness Andrews: There are two
questions there, as I understand it, Mr Betts: first, whether
they should be taking as much notice of our guide as we hope they
are and, second, whether they are producing their own guides and
be under a duty to produce their own strategies. Taking the more
important point—should there be a duty to provide strategies—you
will know that what we have done over the past 10 years is increasingly
to leave local authorities to determine the way they do things
and run things, and that has been the direction of travel, conspicuously
recently, of course, in terms of the Local Area Agreement. I think
if we were to impose a requirement to produce a guide, we would
be moving away from what we want to see, which is local authorities
saying: "Here we have an issue which affects the living standards
and the quality of life in our community; it is really important
and we want to do something about it", and I am not in favour
of that. But the optimistic point is that local authorities really
are doing this in increasing numbers. If you take Richmond, which
is obviously very well known to the Committee, it used its local
development framework to encourage public toilet provision. Plymouth,
for example, has made an assessment of all its provision and what
else is needed. Now, if Plymouth and Richmond can do it, and they
are very different, every local authority in the country should
be able to take that perception and that sort of decision, because
there are a number of different resources and powers that they
can use. Part of the problem is they may not be using what is
already available to them to make a better policy out of this.
Q107 Mr Betts: So what you are saying
is you do not think there should be a statutory requirement to
produce a strategy or plan but your advice would be that every
local authority should be doing that, following the best examples
that are already existing?
Baroness Andrews: I think so.
What we tried to do in this guide essentially was to show first
that it had a very positive benefit to the community when there
were good toilets available, not just for places like Westminster
but for all local authorities and their communities. We tried
also to show that it had a definite benefit in terms of the impact
on tourism and so on, and that local authorities could learn from
each other and from a range of innovative best practice which
was not easily accessible or available. We then also tried to
remove one of the barriers which the LGA in particular had pointed
out to us about this inability to charge for urinals, which was,
in fact, creating a disincentive to charge for toilet provision
as a whole. So by removing that barrier we have also freed up
some new resources and ideas about how to spend the money freed
from that.
Q108 Mr Olner: Following on from
what Clive Betts was saying about whether the good guidance is
right at the bottom of the chief executive's drawer and the bottom
drawer of the leader of the councils, I do think that we ought
to be looking at some stage about bringing a certain duty on public
toilets, particularly as you mentioned the elderly and some of
the elderly's incontinence problems. I did have a brother-in-law
who was severely disabled by a stroke and found it extremely difficult
to get to a public loo. Fortunately at that time he was able to
do it but he had to plan his day knowing where the public loo
was, so if a local authority has none at all, or they are inadequately
placed, then I think we really are letting down our disabled people,
and in that respect I think there ought to be some sort of a duty.
Baroness Andrews: I am sure you
are right, that we have to have a particular care for people whose
needs are different and who need special help as well. It is interesting
that, although the Audit Commission stopped collecting evidence
in 2000, it had already seen an increase in the number of toilets
that were available for disabled people, so there has been a movement
to improve that sort of provision, and certainly we are working
with the Changing Places campaign to address the needs of severely
disabled people and people with complex disabilities. It is interesting
that Richmond has half its community toilets in that scheme available
to disabled people, and I would have thought that is probably
higher than most provision in most local authorities, which suggests
to me that, if you plan these things properly and if you, for
example, take the community strategy and work with cafes and pubs
and shops and make it part of their business and their profit
also to draw people in because provision is so good, you will
achieve the objectives you want without putting a duty on local
authorities, which may or may not be fit for all local authorities
in the same way because provision does differ so much.
Q109 Mr Olner: But do you think the
duty ought to be that councils provide it themselves, or do councils
do a community agreement? All I am worried about is they just
walk away and do nothing. They do not provide it themselves, and
do not do a community agreement either.
Baroness Andrews: What we have
to ensure they know, first, is the sheer benefit to the local
area, to the council, of providing what is right for that area.
What is interesting, for example, is that sometimes the most effective
pressure comes from older people. In Camden it was a group of
older people who got together and said: "This is really not
good enough, we have to have better provision", and they
drew up a strategy which the council put in place, and we have
seen that in other parts of the country. It is not simply the
Council itself responding; it is being put under pressure. What
we have done through the duty to inform local people and the local
area agreements is to say to people: "It is your turn to
speak up here, your voice has to be heard louder here", and
I am not sure that a duty affects that. It has to be something
that the local area does because it is the right thing to do,
and there are all sorts of ways of putting pressures on councillors,
as we know.
Q110 Chair: Minister, you talked
about some ways in which planning can be used to get toilet provision.
Do you think there are other ways that councils should be doing
to get planning and licensing law to extend the range of public
toilet provision?
Baroness Andrews: I certainly
think that planning might be able to be used a bit more creatively.
I spoke of the local development framework which is what created
the opportunity for Richmond to act, and we have had an example
of Section 106 from Richard Chisnell already this afternoon and
I can give another example which is the toilet facilities at Wembley
stadium and around Wembley, in fact, which I think are available
for the local community as well and were driven through a Section
106 agreement. We would look, for example, at what we want to
achieve in the Olympic Village and the regeneration that is going
to be done through that. I would have thought it is self-evident
that you could use Section 106 to put in provision of this. Part
of the challenge is making people, including local councillors,
see that they have a right to ask for these sorts of things and
it is also appropriate when you are making a place, as local authorities
are supposed to be doing, and that this something which really
makes a difference to the quality of the place. A lot of this
is about amplifying and pushing and trying to incentivise. In
terms of the licensing laws I do not think they make a very significant
difference. It is the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions)
Act, in fact, which permits the provision of toilets in places
of entertainment; that is the only place I know where the licensing
legislation actually impacts on provision, and if I am wrong about
that I will write to the Committee.
Q111 John Cummings: Can you tell
the Committee, Minister, how some very large independent cafes
and larger coffee chains can escape from providing toilets for
their customers?
Baroness Andrews: I would hope
that they do not --
Q112 John Cummings: I can assure
you they do.
Baroness Andrews: They do? Well,
that is very interesting. I will take that away and look at it,
if I may. I do not have an answer immediately to that. We have
noticed where community toilet schemes do operate—and not
just in Richmond by any means, there are quite a few and we have
a list of them—that it is often cafés. In relation
to the question you raised earlier women do not often like to
go to pubs on their own, for whatever purpose, cafés are
a much more comfortable choice, and it ought to be perfectly possible
for department stores, and cafés in particular, to offer
that sort of provision. In my experience most of them do but,
clearly, I am wrong.
Q113 John Cummings: Then can I suggest
that you also take this back to the Department, and that all establishments
selling food and drink for consumption on the premises be legally
required to provide toilets for their customers, regardless of
which local authority area they are situated in? Can I ask why
the Department has not brought this forward before?
Baroness Andrews: Part of the
problem you are identifying is the enormous variety of establishments
that would be captured if we had to --
Q114 John Cummings: Indeed, yes.
Baroness Andrews: Very small cafés,
take-away cafés and so on? This would be your preferred
--
Q115 John Cummings: It would depend
how you prepared your legislation, Minister. Has the Department
given it any consideration at all? Have you anything lying in
the top drawer? Is this the first time this has crossed your desk?
Baroness Andrews: I am not entirely
certain actually; it would be a matter for my Department, and
it might be for Trade and Industry or for BERR and so on, other
departments as well, actually, but in terms of whether it has
crossed our desks, it has in relation to the community toilet
schemes, but we were concerned in our guide with public authorities
and public provision.
Q116 John Cummings: Will you be taking
it back?
Baroness Andrews: I shall certainly
take it back and come back to the Committee with a response.
Chair: We were advised beforehand
that only two of Prêt a Manger's outlets, for example, have
toilets, which was a surprise for most of us.
Q117 Anne Main: On the question of
funding, it could well be hugely onerous for many of the small
outlets you have referred to to have to provide the sort of facilities
we have been hearing about, totally disabled friendly and so on,
and I must say St Alban's is a heritage town and it would be disastrous
for some of the small business I know, so can I just park that
with you? If this is going to be part of the place-shaping that
people want to see, if the local authorities said: "We have
some pretty awful public facilities, it is going to be a large
investment to put this right", and they may be in smaller
rural village-type areas so we are not talking about having great
big department stores to sponsor this, if they approach the Government
is there going to be any funding stream they could draw down upon
to help them in partnership develop these facilities, if they
have not got anywhere else particularly they can draw on in that
community to get, say, Section 106 funding out of?
Baroness Andrews: We do fund local
government well, as I am sure you would agree, over the past 10
years --
Q118 Anne Main: I am talking specifically
about this particular issue.
Baroness Andrews: No, we would
not be able to fund direct. There are so many calls on our funding
we have to be extremely careful. We fund new burdens, if appropriate,
but providing public toilets is not a new burden. It is a very
old burden.
Q119 Anne Main: The east of England
is currently undergoing a single issue revision on gypsy and traveller
pitch provision, and part of that is because they wish to get
certain outcomes for the ethnic minorities they see as being disadvantaged
and having poor outcomes and poor health outcomes, and if a council
proactively puts in extra provision they can apply for that to
be fully funded by the council. You could argue, if you want good
health outcomes and good social outcomes for certain groups of
people, for instance, disabled people, elderly people, and an
increasing elderly population, that they should also be able to
apply for a particular set of funding to deliver those outcomes?
Baroness Andrews: It is important
you have focused on outcomes because, of course, local government
framework is now very much about outcomes, which is why it has
changed both its format and its focus, but in relation to the
sorts of issues you raise it would seem to me to be very much
part of something the local authority should look at in terms
of its local area agreement, in terms of its health outcomes and
maybe its education outcomes for children—
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