Summary

Blue Badge professional Tourist Guides in London welcome the investigation by the London Assembly into the alarming decline in public toilets. Earlier this year Blue Badge members of the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides and the Association of Professional Tourist Guides formed an "Inconvenience Committee" to publicise and challenge the poor toilet facilities in London and elsewhere in the UK. Key points made by the Inconvenience Committee on the current decline in public toilets include:

• Negative impact on tourism - lack of appropriately placed toilets for groups; declining number of toilets and increasingly restricted opening hours; poorly maintained facilities and toilets that charge admission
• Negative impact on strategies intended to increase walking and other outdoor pursuits (try finding a toilet open while walking or cycling to work in the morning or evening)
• Negative impact on health and public health and on appropriate social behaviours that support public health: street urination is on the increase and hand washing facilities increasingly hard to find.
• Inequality of access to public toilets for women, the elderly, people with special needs and children. Legislation to improve access for the disabled has had an unintended consequence in increasing the rate of closure of public toilets by local authorities.
• Lack of legislation to protect or require the provision of public toilets
• Lack of planning requirements to ensure appropriate numbers of public toilets based on resident and mobile population needs and for special London events and celebrations, not least Olympics 2012.
  

This paper is framed by the questions posed in the announcement of the London Assembly enquiry on the GLA website.

1. How easy is it to find a public toilet?
Tourist guides know the location of public toilets better than most Londoners - but increasingly have to alter or divert coach or walking tours to ensure a facility for a `comfort break'. Public toilets with several cubicles are hard to find and the recent introduction of 50p charges for toilets around Parliament Square, Westminster, had an immediate impact on tourism in that area. Museums and art galleries have complained about groups entering only to use the toilet facilities but there are very few public toilets on `tourist routes' such as:

• along the Thames Embankment (just one, near Embankment Tube);
• in the West End (none with easy access for a coach, given increasing parking restrictions e.g. there are public toilets in Trafalgar Square (although not nearly enough) but these are not easily accessed by groups travelling by coach).
• around Buckingham Palace (none, unless the group can make the long walk up the Mall to toilets in St James Park).
• Canary Wharf - the public toilets in the outside areas are usually closed, so visitors have to make the complicated journey down into the underground shopping mall (why were public toilets not a key part of the development plans with innovative designs to match the tube stations'?).
• The City of London poses similar difficulties for guides with groups.
  

A separate, but important related issue, is the increasingly restricted opening hours: guides often have to arrive well before gam to meet a group and in areas with no early opening cafes there is rarely a public toilet for the guide to use.

2. Whether toilets are clean, safe and accessible.

The general standard of public toilets is poor: apart from low cleanliness (all too recognisable whiff detectable from the street) and insufficient provision for women (inevitable long queues), hand washing facilities are often restricted and cubicles out of action. Several public toilets in Westminster and the City of London can be singled out for praise as being well maintained (often with an attendant) and capable of serving a large group. The toilets with turnstiles (illegal for those run by local authorities, but not for private contractors) pose an access problem for some users. Access is not just about wheel chair access, which seems to have become the main focus of provision for the disabled. Elderly or arthritic users are often able to use stairs but need hand railings, safe footing and good lighting. Many of the older type of London public toilet, with a stairway down, have been taken out of commission because of the expense or impossibility of providing a lift etc. but relatively inexpensive mobility aids could make them suitable for the non wheel chair disabled.

3. Whether they have the facilities you need when you find one.
Given the decline in numbers of public toilets, it seems almost asking too much for these premises to also provide nappy changing areas, hot and cold water and efficient hand drying. But clearly they should have such facilities: many do not even have a mirror for quick grooming.

4. Is the lack of toilets making it a serious problem for some people to get out and about?
From the tourist guide perspective, there is evidence of increasing anxiety in groups re: finding frequent and appropriate public toilet facilities. As Londoners, we are also aware that people, particularly the middle aged and elderly, expect public toilets to be available and think about availability when planning excursions. If booking a tour with a professional tourist guide, they certainly expect the guide to have planned such facilities (an additional stress on guides these days). Anecdotally, it seems that many people deliberately reduce hydration while out and about (or on tours) to avoid the problem of needing to find a loo. This is poor for health, contributing to renal and urinary tract problems.

5. Toilets at transport stations - tube, bus and train.
Many toilets at tubes have been closed to the public on grounds of cost, vandalism etc. At major tube stations (e.g. Bank, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster), toilets are available but often poorly signposted and thus quite hard to find. Westminster tube toilets now cost 50p, presumably others will follow suit: they should be free and open for long hours. Toilets at railway stations invariably charge for use (a consequence of the legislation covering only those provided by local . authorities and then only requiring free use of urinals). Surely these should be free or sponsored by the rail company and concourse businesses? Public toilets are rarely near a bus stop so access for bus travellers is very limited.

6. The perfect public toilet
This should of course be free (not much to ask of a `world class city') but also:

1. with sufficient cubicles for men and women so that large groups can use them without lengthy queues
2. clean and well maintained
3. safe and well lit
4. appropriate access aids such as hand rails on stairs, plus separate facility Cot wheel chair users (clearly signposted if not possible to provide within main toilets)
5. hot and cold water and soap for hand washing
6. Hand drying with paper towels as well as the hot air machines (which often work poorly or take so long that people leave with wet hands, the worst scenario for spread of infection)
7. Attendant on duty the secret of the perfect public toilet!
8. Litter bins for disposal of hand towels etc
9. Nappy changing room
10. Feminine hygiene provision (e.g. bins within cubicles)
11. Information and health education re: hand washing and sexual health
12. Early morning and evening opening hours for workers (and tourist guides)
13. The `perfect' public toilet would also provide sitting area for people to wait for their friends/ group.
14. Machines offering various necessities (well stocked and in working order).
    

7. Why should public toilets be free?
Cost has been used to excuse the closure of public toilets and of course facilities have to be paid for. Yet, in a modern, mobile city, toilets are on an importance ranking with pavements, litter control, roads and street lighting. Whether the cost of public toilets should be via council tax, or business levies, or state funding may depend on the location but they should be free. Otherwise it creates an access boundary for people with low incomes and tourists who haven't changed money or worked out the coin system. Perhaps we should look back for precedents in London's history, when rich benefactors such as Dick Whittington funded public latrines for the greater comfort of those less well off. Or when Bernard Shaw lent his support to provision of toilets for women. in the early 1900s.

8. Innovative schemes.
Some of the best 'public' toilets in London are to be found in our museums and galleries for example in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery or the Tate Modem. These are intended, obviously, for visitors to those institutions and their complaint of use by others is a clear indication of the lack of public toilets elsewhere. The `loo of the year' at Oxford Circus boasts state of the art security and hygiene provision, but tourist guides wonder why public toilets in tourist and non shopping centres, e.g. those in parks or around Parliament, could not be the subject of an innovative scheme. For example, architectural competitions linked to major developments the forthcoming Olympics may provide an ideal opportunity.

Conclusion
London was once a world leader in sanitation and in public toilets. Tourist guides are not alone in identifying the decline and the associated increase in street urination and risk to public health and well being. Provision of public toilets must be part of London's overall strategy for a world city. The short deadline of the current enquiry (only discovered by us last week) has prevented collation of anecdotes and further examples. We shall be happy to provide these later in your enquiry, as our campaign and surveys will be continuing until the decline in public toilets is reversed.


Dr Ros Stanwell Smith (rstanwellsmith@aol.com) 29 November 2005, on behalf of the Inconvenience Committee of Blue Badge Tourist Guides (saveourloos@aol.com)