A little local trouble
COUNTRY A weekly round-up of rural rumpuses
Toilets in rural Wales are being vandalised so often that one council is planning to sell them all off. Vandalism to public conveniences at Barmouth, Tywyn and Dolgellau costs Meirionnydd District Council tens of thousands of pounds each year. John Fisher, chief technical services officer, has suggested that the council could sell its 56 toilet blocks and use the pounds 135,000 a year now being spent on cleaning and repairs to pay private businesses to open their toilets to the public, a practice already adopted by East Hampshire District Council in England.
A grant of up to pounds 2,000 a year would help hotels, pubs and cafes spruce up their toilets for increased public use.
This would leave a problem of what to do with the unwanted blocks. "Many of the small rural GPO telephone exchanges have been sold off and put to good use," says Dafydd Parry of estate agents R G and J H Jones, "but I don't know how you would go about marketing a public toilet block. If you put your mind to it, though, you could come up with a number of alternative uses for them, such as sales kiosks or information points."
The scheme is unlikely to be given the go-ahead until next year.
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