Fears over public toilet access as council turns to private sector

Officers have been asked to gather more detail on plans to rely on private sector businesses to plug gaps in a county’s public toilet provision, especially at sites popular with tourists.

With tourism booming councillors on Wrexham’s Safeguarding, Communities and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee were concerned that the draft Local Toilet Strategy meant people may struggle to find toilets or that private enterprises like shops and cafes could withdraw consent to non-customers at any time.

Councillors were also concerned about rural provision, including at sites that attract significant tourism like the World Heritage Site at Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

There are no plans within the strategy to create new public toilets. Instead the aim is to encourage more retail and private sector businesses to allow their toilets to be used by the public, with an app showing your nearest loo or clear  physical signposting for those without mobile data.

“This strategy has been subject effectively to two consultations,” said Roger Mapleson, Interim Head of Service for Public Protection.

“One pre-draft which actually got over 500 responses and a more recent post-draft consultation with fewer than 30 responses.

“There is no ongoing identified resources to deliver all of this stuff so there will need to be some imaginative thinking about how we could achieve some of the aims set out.”

Those unfunded aims are to increase the number of publicly available toilets, especially in areas lacking provision, to improve awareness of where toilets are and to give public confidence in the safety of using existing publicly available toilets.

“Local authorities in Wales were asked to get this strategy up in 2019 with a year after for it to be published,” said Cllr Krista Childs. “I think we’re five years out of date on that.

“I’m just wondering how how you decided where where then toilets are are going to be needed? I’ve been on the on our website to look at the mapping areas and noticed of course that unfortunately Nant Mill isn’t one of those on there – they were closed soon after the car parking meter was placed there.

“We had lots of issues, getting street scene involved to clean up from people using the outside of the toilet area when they couldn’t use the facilities.

“In the consultation 77% of people said thy were not confident they could find toilet facilities in the county and only 9% said they were.

“The current budget is insufficient and has been declining over many years. Are we not looking at expanding and looking at increasing that that budget for better facilities around our county?

“With the City of Culture bid and the great increase in visitors to Wrexham can we help expand and secure better facilities for people?”

Ian Jones, Chief Officer for Economy and Planning, reiterated that the strategy was focused on increasing provision by opening up toilet facilities within private businesses to the public.

“The approach in the strategy is to try and expand the provision so there’s a bigger availability without needing to expand the dedicated budget,” he said.

“For example some of the work that’s been undertaken with the private sector and some of the provisions within the city center and beyond the center such as with public houses or restaurants in in terms of making sure that signage is placed on the door and there is an available provision for people.​

“If we went back 15 or 20 years in terms of what the classic public toilet provision was, the current provision utilising those private sector facilities is a bigger provision. That’s hopefully something we would hope to expand in terms of collective working rather than actually increasing a dedicated budget.

Cllr Jerry Wellens asked how officers expected to ensure private sector partners offered consistent access to their toilet facilities.

“If you’re dealing with the private sector, the first question that they will always ask is what’s in it for us?,” he said. “How are you going to be selling that?

“The risk that strikes me is that the private sector providers can at any point turn around and say we’ve had enough of this now and peel the sticker off the door (to remove access to non-customers).”

Mr Mapleson said that the arrangement would need to be an agreed partnership between the authority and business community.

“There will be a need to support the private sector,” he said. “Just exactly how we do that is something we’ll have to develop.

“For example we’ve got an awful lot of shops around around around the city center that do have toilets.​ The big supermarkets, B&Q, they all have a toilet in them.​ I don’t think necessarily everybody knows that when they’re out and about in the town center and those may be the kind of quick wins that we might have if we can engage with those local businesses.​

“We’ve not actually gone that very far down that route yet so I wouldn’t want to speculate how successful that might be.​

“We’ve approached several businesses, some have been keen and some haven’t.​ Where they are local businesses you’re more likely to get engagement.​

“Often you find it’s outside the city centre that you get more positive discussions, however with the private sector there’s no contract in place, there is no certainty. It’s all based on goodwill – that is the reality.​”

The officers added that a planned app showing where people can access publicly available toilets across the county borough would assist tourists planning their visit to the area.

But committee chair Cllr Derek  Wright wanted to know how rural areas – specifically the World Heritage Site at Pontcysyllte Aqueduct – which are dealing with an influx of new tourists – would cope,

“On one side of the World Heritage site there are no toilets at all,” he said. “There’s one pub but you need an alpaca to get to it. Personally I would like to see – before this strategy is completed – for it to be expanded to including those sorts of areas.

​”I used to be a regular visitor to the Telford pub in Trevor. They opened their facilities to the public for a while but because there was no other toilets in that area they were getting hundreds of people a day using them without spending in the pub.​

“So I’d like to see more around how this works in rural areas.”

The committee recommended officers prepare an updated report to be heard in February 2027.