DIRECTOR’S REVIEW

[Download the British Toilet Association Spring 2006 Newsletter in PDF format (file size 2.9MB, this file may take a few moments to download completely) ...]

OBJECTIVE (PARTIALLY) ACHIEVED!

When I set up The British Toilet Association, back in 1999, I declared that our key objective was to persuade Government to place a statutory obligation on Local Authorities to provide adequate and suitable public toilets within their areas.

All UK Local Authorities had historically practised their moral obligation to provide this front line public service, but the abandonment of full time toilet Attendants in most areas, coupled with increasing levels of anti-social behaviour and numbers of alternative, commercial providers, has meant that Authorities have largely opted out of providing this “discretionary” public service.

Many campaign supporters will have heard me banging on about eating, drinking and toileting being the three essential ingredients for human survival (we die if we don’t do all three!).While our eating and drinking needs are well satisfied, some would say saturated, wherever we go (and, usually, our toileting needs can be satisfied when we stop for something to eat or drink), the problems arise when we want the toilet but not necessarily something to eat or drink.Toileting is, after all, the after effect of eating and drinking and, for most people, is needed more often than eating or drinking! Anatomical fact of life!

So, the BTA campaign has really been about trying to raise the profile of this basic human need when away from home and, since our lives are regulated in one way or another by Government and / or delegated enforcement agencies, it is not unreasonable to expect some form of provision regulation relating to toilet provision. There are regulations as far as facilities for employees are concerned but toilets for customers or visitors have always been a little discretionary – or as the Government would say – down to market forces.The BTA says this is not good enough.

But, we’ve had a major breakthrough towards our cause – in fact two. The Government requested a meeting with the BTA, following a fairly intensive lobbying campaign last year and this is reported more fully in the political campaign section later. Following this meeting, in October, we’ve assisted the ODPM’s office in preparing a section on public toilet provision to be included in their Cleaner, Safer, Greener – How to Manage Town Centres guide, to be distributed to every Local Authority. So we’re on the Government’s radar at last!

Not quite the statutory provision legislation which we want but at last Ministers and Civil Servants are responding to our cause and we’re grateful for that.

In fact, the whole area of Local Authority reorganisation and lack of funding, suggests we’re still a long way off achieving our original objective. When Local Authorities are threatened with Council Tax capping, it is normally the public toilets – the discretionary service – which get panned!

The second major uplift for our cause comes from the London Assembly inquiry into public toilet provision throughout London.The enquiry team requested a special meeting with the BTA and their comprehensive report is music to our ears.

I’ve written to Ken Livingstone several times in recent years – to encourage him to raise the public toilet profile in London. My last letter to him, in March, was to wish him a successful visit to Beijing and to make sure he asked the Beijing Authorities about the £27 million they are spending on providing 4700 five star tourism toilets throughout Beijing before the 2008 Olympic Games! I visited a few of them when we took a BTA delegation
to the 2004 World Toilet Summit and they really are five star!

The BTA staged the first World Toilet Summit ever held in the West last September, in Belfast and our 350+ delegates from 36 different countries enjoyed both the varied Conference programme and the hectic social events laid on over the three days. Refer centre spread and front cover photographs.

My one regret was that only 33 UK Local Authorities, out of a total of 468, bothered to be represented. This suggests to me that, in a relatively few years, public toilets will probably not be provided by Local Authorities but by the commercial sector – companies dedicated to the cause and able to manage things to an appropriate level of sustained quality.Authorities would then be responsible solely for service delivery as opposed to service provision, which they find so difficult in the present LA financial climate.

This could mean all of us having to pay to go in future but we have to accept that nothing of quality comes free anymore. Granny or Great Granny,“spent a penny” to pay a visit.That old penny is now equivalent to 50p. Of course we want to continue encouraging a “free” service but when the quality of that service is often so poor or unsafe, or both, then there has to be another way. The Government could legislate but would have to find (taxpayers) money. Local Councils could and most still do provide, with local (ratepayers) money or we, the users pay each time we go.The ‘cut it out’ option – thus avoiding the issue – has been allowed to happen, in spite of local protestations from all quarters and I just wish the BTA had a little more clout to assist or highlight the very many local ‘save our toilet’ campaigns which are happening all over the UK.

You’re probably wondering what all this verbosity has to do with the caption at the start – OBJECTIVE (PARTIALLY) ACHIEVED!

I hope you agree that, since its inception in 1999, the BTA has done something to raise the public toilet debate and, in one way or another, has contributed to the raising of standards in many of our ‘away from home’ toilets – not just the public ones.

There is much to applaud – the increasing numbers of providers who recognise the (customer) pulling power of their toilets, the many conscientious Local Authority providers who maintain high (Loo of theYear Award winning) standards,within their own financial straight jackets, and the large numbers of commercial organisations and washroom product and service suppliers, who are working hard to give toilet users a pleasant and satisfying toileting experience, often at very low margins, such is the low perceived worth of this basic everyday service.

If you’ll excuse the non-deliverance of a statutory framework – the Government have again stated that is not going to happen – then I hope you’ll agree that the BTA has partially achieved its objective – its very ‘raison d’etre’. I’ll be interested to hear your views. We’ll include a correspondence section in the next Newsletter.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Richard Chisnell

Director
British Toilet Association
April 2006

[Download the British Toilet Association Spring 2006 Newsletter in PDF format (file size 2.9MB, this file may take a few moments to download completely) ...]

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