kwest
Actually how dare councils or anyone else suggest going into cafes and pubs to use the toilets? These are private businesses not public conveniences. They would have to have cleaners several times more per day than they normally do. This incurs extra costs for the business who business rates are high enough already. If you are not spending money in that premises then you should not be taking advantage of their facilities. Public toilets are essential and given the massive council tax bills we all pay now, should be provided. maybe reducing some of the less important spending by councils to pay for them.
Actually how dare councils or anyone else suggest going into cafes and pubs to use the toilets...
It is a bit rich isn't it?
Putting the onus on local businesses, and making it awkward for the public.
I don't know how many people actually do use cafes, tea shops, etc, but I'd imagine neither the business owners or their patrons would want a steady stream of people using the facilities. Considering how some individuals are tardy with personal hygiene, those toilets which were meant for a limited clientele could become rather unsavoury.
Among my circle of friends, there's a number of us who now no longer go into town to browse / buy, or amble, for this very reason, since the toilets in the high street were sold off by the council and converted into a house by the developers as a des res.
There are public toilets - but they are a long walk from the town centre - you'd never make it if you were in a 'hurry'.
Additionally, the streets are seldom swept, overgrowth of vegetation hardly every cut back, public bins have been removed, planters no longer planted-up (this is a tourist town) - and there are long-standing pot holes on the roads leading into the town.
The town is, in fact, dying - in spite of the volunteer groups who try to keep things clean and tidy. When I first came to this Cotswolds town in 2007, it was a lovely vibrant place, now shops are closing and opening and closing again in quick succession, residents no longer put out their hanging baskets etc because of the (small but destructive) anti-social yobs who destroy them for fun - and word must've got out to the tourists about the lack of public loos, because their foot-fall has, well - fallen.
And it's not just our town.