Special Council Meeting on Public Toilets Closure
Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors have joined forces to call for a special meeting of Epsom & Ewell Borough Council to consider the closure of Public Toilets. The meeting is open to the public and will be held in Epsom Town Hall at 7.30pm on Tuesday 2nd November.
This year the council has closed public toilets in Stoneleigh Broadway, Ewell village and in Upper High Street, Epsom, part of budget cuts. The Liberal Democrats would not support the closures unless a Community Toilet Scheme was put in place instead - some small effort was made to do this, but ultimately it failed. The closure of the loos in Stoneleigh resulted in a huge protest.
In Upper High Street, Cllr Alison Kelly has received complaints that the adjacent footpath is being used as a public toilet.
There are no plans to demolish the buildings and now there is a chance of re-opening them, but only if some councillors of the ruling RA Residents' Party are prepared to overturn their previous decision. RA councillors have backtracked on previous decisions, e.g. conferring the Freedom of the Borough on the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, Cherry Orchard Nursery ... but will they do so this time? RA councillors in the Stoneleigh area are thought to have been deselected as candidates for the borough council elections in 2011 because they supported the toilet closures.
Cllr Julie Morris, who attended the Stoneleigh protest, said "yes, we needed to make savings, but there were alternative ways of saving money or indeed increasing income. A Community Toilet Scheme works well in places like Richmond and has made significant budget savings, even when shops and restaurants are offered an annual fee for displaying a sign that their loos are open to the public. It was a relatively small amount of money involved and yet again, targeted a vulnerable group, as did the parking charges imposed for Blue Badge holders".