Toddler, 2, is ‘forced to go to toilet in car park’
DAD’S FURY AS LITTLE GIRL IS REFUSED ACCESS TO FACILITIES AT LIBRARY
A DAD says his toddler daughter was forced to go to the toilet in the car park of a library after she was refused access to the building’s facilities.
Dad Brett Hewitt-Hallam had taken two-year-old Matilda to Glossop Library when the incident happened.
After telling her dad she needed to go, he asked a librarian could they use the toilet.
With the adjoining adult education centre and cafe closed, the only toilet available was a disabled one.
However there was an A4 sign on it saying ‘staff toilet’ and Brett says the librarian said it wasn’t for public use and she would get in trouble if people used it.
Brett, 46, told the M.E.N.: “The librarian was putting some books away and I said ‘can we use the toilet?.’ She said ‘not really, it’s only for staff.’
“My response was ‘we’ve used it before’ and I told her it was for my little girl. Matilda was hopping about by this point and holding her bottom. The woman was then very hesitant and said ‘I don’t think we’ve got a key.’
“She was getting desperate so I said ‘forget it’ and just stomped out. Luckily I had the travel potty in my boot.”
Brett, who works Monday to Friday as a stonemason so can only get to the library at weekends, said: “I can understand it if they stopped me going, but they’ve got to have somewhere for children and disabled people to go.”
Matilda’s mum Lisa, a part-time hairdresser, was working at the time of the incident and was ‘furious’ when she heard what happened.
After sharing the incident on Facebook, she was told other people had also been refused access, so raised the issue with High Peak MP Ruth George, who has written to the council seeking assurances it won’t happen again.
The 38-year-old said: “Plenty of places in Glossop - Aldi, Next, even Halfords - have let us use their staff toilets in the past as they seem to understand that when a toddler needs to go they need to go now.”
A Derbyshire County Council spokeswoman said: “We’d like to apologise to this family for any upset caused by what happened at Glossop Library, especially to the little girl.
“Unfortunately many of our libraries don’t have public toilets, but where this is the case we always try to make them available to people who need to use them, especially young children.
“On this occasion the library was quite busy and the staff member who was asked about the availability of the toilet was tied up on another task. She asked the family if they could wait for a short time, but the family then left as she was unlocking it for them.”