Needing the loo could soon cost you more at peak times, under local authority plans to introduce surge pricing in public toilets. GB News has more:
Local authorities are exploring demand-based pricing, which could see toilet charges rise during popular periods such as the summer months and major events.
Two councils are currently considering the controversial approach. Cotswolds District Council has been looking at a “dynamic pricing” model that could result in higher charges during the summer.
Sefton council in Merseyside is also preparing to introduce contactless payment machines at its public toilets. The new technology would allow the council to change prices during busy periods in the future. …
The proposals have faced criticism from residents who fear the changes could become another way for councils to raise money and place additional costs on those least able to afford them.
In Sefton, the council said its new contactless payment system “will allow scope for future generation of income.”
Documents from council meetings held this week show the technology could allow charges to be changed during events and other periods of high demand, helping the council cover the cost of maintaining the facilities. …
The row comes as the number of public toilets across England continues to fall.
Freedom of Information data compiled by the Telegraph shows the number has dropped 14% over the past decade, from 2,111 in 2016 to 1,747 in 2026. The figures are based on responses from just over half of all councils, meaning the true decline could be even greater.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
What toilets?
I’m sure it’ll only be a wee surcharge.
Naybe they can do a 2 for 1 discount?!🤣
What’s a public toilet, they have completely disappeared where I live
Could give a whole new meaning to ‘Fly tipping’…
Desperate for every penny they can get to pay for all the crap they provide. Where I live a new double bicycle lane has been put along one side of a main drag in the town costing a huge sum of money. It has made the road narrower so that vehicles always have to wait in a queue behind parked cars till oncoming traffic has passed. I pass along this road several times a day since it has been there 3 months ago and I have not seen ONE SINGLE BICYCLE use this new bike lane. —–Governments and Councils are stuck in this ideological alignment syndrome where common sense, practicality and cost/benefit are abandoned in favour of the group think of the day.
You must be talking about Conway St, Varmint
Don’t you think it’s all part of the effort to discourage the use of private vehicles? In addition to the loss of road space to bicycle and bus lanes, there’s the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, congestion charging, ultra low emission zones, blanket 20mph speed limits, failure to ensure road building matches the speed of housing development, failure to maintain existing roads, failure to ensure coordination between organisations digging up roads to maintain their networks…
Or Gloucestershire where the local councils have dropped £10’s of millions on narrowing major roads to put huge cycle lanes in… madness
Just how stupid are these people? Given the number of ‘rough sleeper’, wandering immigrants and drunkards staggering homewards the result will be puddles of piss and piles of poo on the pavement or in people’s gardens.
Before our wonderful Labour council closed them wholesale, I had stopped using the public loos in our town because they were full of junkies, drunks, and their associated paraphernalia. Thank goodness that M&S and John Lewis have loos.
Just a thought…..Won’t the installation of the necessary technology cost significantly more than the revenue raised?🤔
A bit like the taxation Laffer curve ….
….for the cost of having a pee
They love that as its part of the game and 2 million contract to install 25 gates for payment, which will spend most of their time out of order. Total contract value actually less than £200 k including installation, £1.8 mill for the boys. Boom Boom trebles all round.
This is bound to be the case. Which reminds me… aren’t we nearing the predicted tipping point where the London ULEZ costs more to enforce than it raises?
There is a problem with the mentality of tax, tax, tax. People will stop using them and go for a McPiss instead or the local supermarket of wherever. Then they wont see the revenue anyway, which gives them more reason to close them down. I wonder if they are the same people who came up with the new regulations for using Recycling Centres and the wholly predictable pile of crap in every bloody lay-by, left by people who are excluded by process.
Meanwhile Cambridge’s Labour councillors have sluiced away a million quid on public squat toilets, “that many international visitors prefer.”
Rest assured at a pound to spend a penny, “accessibility, safety, and inclusivity sit right at the heart of the new design…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/8d0c8f8db5f4c700
…An abomination first negotiated during a bus trip across Europe over half a century ago. Rarely come across in Europe in recent decades – Cambridge leads the Great Leap Backwards.
Many international visitors prefer marrying children, and prefer stoning women to death, and prefer throwing gays from tall buildings.
Shall we accommodate those international visitors also?
Shall we stop trying to accommodate primitive and barbaric behaviour, and not regress backwards from how far we have civilised ourselves…
Why do so many people in this country see foreign ways and cultures as more valuable and more important than their own?
“Public toilets” – what are those? Many councils have abolished them already.
The City of London closed all their toilets and then helpfully produced a map of where they expected private companies would allow people to use their customer facilities. On the plus side the railway stations stopped charging for their toilets and hopefully they are not behind the barriers.
Labour controlled Sefton Council is particularly inept. It’s lost over £20 million and counting on attempting to be commercial developers with Bootle New Strand. Lost further millions attempting to be a hospitality organisation and then decided to be a house builder and is currently nearly £6 million down on that project. Hence their reasoning on why we need to pay more for a pot to piss in.
Ill raise you 75 million on that, the Wirral council did a partnership with the state pension fund of Canada. 2 buildings on a 35 year lease. One for the work from homers and one to be let commercially.
The work from homers didn’t want to move in as there was no free parking and commercial lets, well there were none. The buildings cost over £35 mill to build, 75 million of debt from the Canadian pension fund over 35 years, then the auditors down valued the two buildings to £12 mill. And nobody knows where the money went! And they spent another £27 million on works that the contract (which wasn’t actually complete when it was let for £12 million) and now they have to clean up Wotsit Street which was a insult to the town residents and tax payers and for an undisclosed some. It made the street look like something from Mogadishu. And nobody knows where the money went there either. Do you see a pattern?
Guess what, no one was sacked, the CEO went sick for 4 months until he resigned and is now CEO of another Borough Hereford County Council.. Hereford beware this is… Read more »
They can piss off, if that’s not too costly?
Well, good luck with that… most of them seem to be closed?