Ex-public toilets should reopen, not converted

✒ IT is certainly true that Exeter City Council needs fresh ideas and leadership, as Councillor Hannaford suggests (Independents aim to shake up city council and promise to put residents first if elected, April 11).

After nearly 14 years in power, Exeter Labour is looking tired, and set in its ways. Independents have a value in breaking party straitjackets in local government decisionmaking, though it is fair to point out that Green Party councillors, like these independents, are not whipped to vote in a particular way.

The stated ambition of the independent candidates to “put people’s priorities first” is superficially attractive, though wholly unrealistic. Who are the “people”? Or the “residents”? We’re a diverse lot who have our individual views on local services and the future of our city.

As an example, one of the goals on which the independent candidates are said to be agreed is “delegating more funding at ward level to work with local communities”. From which central budgets will these funds come from? Will the city be forced to spend less on street cleansing because money has been delegated to wards which may decide to spend it on play equipment? Who will take these decisions? The best organised lobbying groups perhaps? And who will perform the role for the delegated funds that council officers do now for central budgets in evaluating proposals and assessing them to see whether they will be an effective use of scarce public funds?

No councillor, whether independent or party-aligned, can please everyone all the time. Being in power means exercising judgement, not just doing the bidding of particular pressure groups. Nor does it mean that what the majority of people want – assuming this can be established – can always be delivered, because financial constraints on councils mean that councillors must make choices, often between options which all have degrees of unattractiveness.

It will be sensible for anyone contemplating voting for independent candidates to examine any promises they may make with more than usual caution, since if elected there is no one at all to hold them to account until they are up for re-election in four years’ time.

Peter Cleasby Exeter ✒ RECENTLY I was in Cowick Street when I saw the notice of a planning application to set up a business where the old public toilets used to be. Then I read in the Express & Echo about plans to turn the ones by the library into shops and the ones in Blackboy Road into a café.

While it’s great to see business enterprise in Exeter, all of these are unnecessary. In Cowick Street there is an empty building in the precinct nearby where NatWest used to be and another empty building across the road where I used to enjoy a fun night at the always quirky Exeter Gin Distillery and Sample Room.

Similarly, there are lots of other empty buildings of different shapes and sizes in the city centre that must be brought back into use to save our high street. The public toilets should be reopened as public toilets.

Take St Thomas for example: people working in the local shops tell me that since the toilets under the railway bridge closed, the homeless are doing their business in the alleyways around the Cowick Street precinct, and I’ve noticed the smell myself. The public toilets closing in the city centre has led to similar problems in Belmont Park.

It would also be good to reopen the public toilets near Ennerdale Way as lots of people use Exwick Fields for dog

» Sir Ben Bradshaw is the MP for Exeter