Falkirk Council urged to reopen public toilets now

Councillor Allyson Black, Labour’s economic development spokesperson, says council-owned toilets are, once again, under threat of closure.

She says she has asked council officers several times about when the area’s public toilets might reopen but has not yet had an answer.

She said: “Our town centres need all the help they can get just now,  public toilets are important to people visiting our town centres.

“Many people have issues whereby they need to know that toilets are easily available.

“As our town centres have opened up, with pressures on cafes etc, and longer times to wait on public transport, having toilets open is even more important.”

Now Ms Black is concerned that closure of the public conveniences appear to be lined up as a saving to be made from the council’s budget.

She said: “I was very disappointed to read in the finance report of the Emergency Executive meeting of June 25, that closure of the public toilets was a new savings proposal for this year.

“In previous years they have come up as an option and I have always fought to keep them open.”

The decision on whether or not to close the toilets was not taken at that meeting as councillors agreed that further work needed to be done on the financial position and recovery plan.

Ms Black said: “The Labour group will continue to oppose the closure of our toilets.

“As a council we need to get the basics right, closing our public toilets would only give us a saving of £0.138 million, not a lot of money, when we are facing a shortfall of millions.

“We need to get those toilets open, they may not be a priority of Falkirk Council but for many people they are a necessity.”

The council toilets do not include Falkirk Community Trust-run facilities such as The Helix and Callendar Park, although they also remain closed.

The SNP leader of Falkirk Council, Cecil Meiklejohn, said: “As a result if the impact of COVID 19 there are aspects of the councils savings plans for this financial year that will not be able to be realised.

“As a result there is a predicted budget gap, and officers are rightly tasked with providing options to members on mitigating actions, hence the proposals that were brought forward to the Emergency Executive.

“It was. however. recognised that the financial position was variable as a result of various funding streams coming from both UK and Scottish Governments along with a changing environment in dealing with the pandemic and members agreed to defer any budget decisions until our financial projections were more robust and would be reviewed at the council meeting in September.

“The Council as part of the restart process requires under health and safety to carry out a number of tests on all its public buildings prior to reopening, and have been working though a program of doing so.

“Schools and early years facilities have, however, been given priority to enable the pupils to get back to full-time education.’

A spokesperson for Falkirk Council said: “Whilst we cannot say exactly when the public toilets will re-open, we can confirm that we are now progressing the pre-opening property checks on the toilets and are assessing what additional cleaning will be required in order to meet the Scottish Government’s guidance.”