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Visitors hunt to spend a penny as council saves £36,000

Siew Peng Lee • Published 1 Jul 2011 07:35 Print Comments 14 Comments

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VISITORS to Aberdour will have to look for somewhere to spend a penny as Fife Council plans to remove the village's three public Superloo toilets.

The council plans to discontinue the toilets, which are said to cost £12,000 each a year to maintain, in 2012 as part of the implementation of its Comfort Break scheme and also due to their general condition and the cost of maintaining them.

Two of the Superloos are located next to the new cafe at Silver Sands, with the third at the corner of the play park at Shore Road.

And Aberdour Community Council is hoping the decision will not leave visitors to the popular seaside village cross-legged.

Chair Arthur Lloyd said, "Aberdour is supposed to be the jewel in the Fife Riviera but a jewel without toilet facilities is no jewel at all.

"We have a Blue Flag beach at Silver Sands and Black Sands is a Seaside Award beach as well.

"If the cafe at Silver Sands (which has toilet facilities) is not up and running, then the toilets won't be open all day.

"But we have a year to sort this out - something we're looking at is the council's Comfort Scheme where some recompense is offered to pubs and hotels for visitors to use their toilets.

"It's one of the options - it would encourage local businesses but we wouldn't have control over that.

"I'd imagine there'd be an impact on tourism, although we can't say it will stop people from coming."

He added that if the council removed the Superloos, the community council would like to see a more permanent structure put in, "something between a Superloo and a full toilet facility".

He continued, "They will have to make sure that if they remove it, they'll have to replace it but somebody would have responsibility for that and would have to make sure it was clean.

"If the council can't take it on then the community council would have to look at taking it on voluntarily or getting someone to take it on.

"In which case we would hope to get some recompense from the council."

Mike Fuchs, the council's parks and countryside operations manager, explained that a review of public toilets in Fife had shown that they were a "huge cost" to the council in terms of cleaning, maintenance, staff costs and repairs due to vandalism.

He continued, "The condition of the toilets also did not generally meet customer expectations and users - particularly women - would seek to use alternative facilities such as cafes and restaurants.

"The Comfort Break Scheme has since been established throughout Fife, whereby businesses and organisations open up their toilet facilities for members of the public.

"Toilets in all Fife Council buildings, with the exception of schools, are also available to the public to use.

"As part of this scheme the automatic public conveniences at Aberdour will close once the current lease expires.

"There are toilet facilities for public use in Aberdour Community Leisure Centre on Shore Road and at the train station.

"The public toilets at Silver Sands were recently completely refurbished and will be open to the public throughout the summer."

This article appeared in Dunfermline Press 01 Jul 11

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