Toilets saga exemplifies Crieff’s ‘poor treatment’

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Dear Editor

In 2018, the then Tory administration of Perth and Kinross Council (PKC) was responsible for closing the toilets from October until March.

Indeed, one of our elected members at the time emphasised that the local authority had no obligation to provide such facilities.

Unfortunately for PKC it had conveniently – please excuse the pun– forgotten at the time that an agreement had been entered into with BID which included the provision of public toilet facilities.

As a result the toilets were fully re-opened – other than of course during the Covid strathearnherald.co.uk.

Make sure you include your name, address and some information about your image. restrictions – but only remained so until October 1, 2021, following the demise of BID.

Thereafter they were only opened from April to September in each of 2022 and 2023 – a return to ‘seasonal opening’, which was what was originally planned by PKC’s Tory administration.

A comfort scheme was not set up until early January 2022 and it was well into January until anyone knew about it. This was complete incompetence.

Liz Smith’s column was headed ‘Closure of toilets could lead to loss of trade for Crieff’. This has already happened!

For example, in October 2021 two buses – mostly full of senior citizens – stopped at the public toilets to find them closed and no alternative comfort scheme available at the time. It is a safe bet that the bus company concerned will never return to Crieff.

Marcus Tyler submitted this picture of a cormorant he spotted on the banks of the River Almond recently.

Attempts were made by Crieff Community Council following the reversion to ‘seasonal opening’ on October 1, 2021, to have the toilets re-opened fully.

We put forward a couple of possibilities only to have them completely rejected by PKC.

A Freedom of Information request to have a breakdown of the supposed £28,500 six-month running cost of the public toilets – a figure which was subsequently reduced to £23,000 – was rejected.

The response was that the “information is not available”.

Anyone who believes either of the above figures in relation to the running of the toilets is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Why do our elected councillors not query such figures?

For over 20 years I was financial director of one of Scotland’s top performing companies. Had I been asked a similar question and said the “information is not available” I would have quickly received my P45.

Now, of course, the council’s SNP administration has closed the toilets completely.

The fact of the matter is that for many years Crieff has been served very badly by Perth and Kinross Council – regardless of the political complexion of the council; whether SNP, Tory, coalition or a minority administration.

This is simply yet another example of Crieff’s poor treatment by PKC, while vast sums of money continue to be spent in Perth.

I wish the new Crieff Community Council every success in pursuing this matter with PKC.

They will need all the luck in the world.

Douglas Watters, former Crieff CC member