City actually has lots of toilet facilities

The staff and members of Bath & North East Somerset Council often face criticism with good reason.

Stephen Chesworth (Letters, November 3) is however quite mistaken in his assertion that Bath lacks publicly available toilet facilities.

I visited the city on the day that his letter was published and I am happy to report that, having parked in the excellent (council-provided) Charlotte Street car park (beneath the beautiful Royal Victoria Park), I was happy, for a price of just 20 pence, to use the clean and adequately maintained toilets provided. Had I have wished, I could also have visited two similar installations less than a hundred yards away and there are of course numerous other venues at which facilities are available without users needing to act “furtively”.

Perhaps it is not well known that the toilets at other council-managed locations such as Parade Gardens and (the last time I looked) The Guildhall and Roman Baths are also freely available for use by the general public and there are of course many, many others in and around the city.

Indeed, I am happy to challenge Mr Chesworth (or anybody else) to chart a route through Bath which does not go past numerous toilets which are freely available to visitors.

I include in this the toilets at Southgate which (although as Mr Chesworth rightly points out are managed by the private sector) were built as the result of a planning requirement laid down by you guessed it - that pesky council. Ditto for what was The Podium.

I will not go on other than to echo Mr Chesworth’s point that many hundreds of other toilets are free to use across the city, being provided by the retail and hospitality sectors, and that no purchase is necessary by anyone needing to avail themselves of these facilities.

Finally, I am glad to report that (a few full bins aside), Bath was remarkably litter-free when we visited and what little rubbish was visible had certainly not been left by the council whose staff were diligently cleaning up any waste they could locate.

Let’s just stop talking the city (and its council) down unnecessarily shall we?

Bath residents are privileged to live in what might well be the country’s most beautiful city and would better spend their leisure time enjoying the benefits of this, rather than moaning about problems which simply do not exist. Matthew Smith

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