Relief as town park gets its loos back

Staff from The Ropewalk charity helped with the clean up ahead of the reopening

Visitors to a North Lincolnshire park can breathe a sigh of relief with the reopening of public toilets.

The toilets in Baysgarth Park, Barton Upon Humber, which have not been in regular use for a number of years, reopened last week.

Liz Bennet, chief executive of The Ropewalk charity, which has taken over the running of the facilities, said the community response had been "incredibly positive".

"It's been nice to have that support for what is quite a small thing - but it means a lot to people," she added.

Ms Bennet said there was still some work to do to remove graffiti from the building

Ms Bennet said there had been an issue with the toilets for quite some time, with opening restricted for when events such as the beer festival or carnival were held in the park.

"Previously, they had been vandalised quite a lot - so the cost of repairing them continually was quite excessive," she said.

The Ropewalk took out a lease from North Lincolnshire Council for Baysgarth House Museum in 2024.

The authority has also now contracted the charity to open and close and clean the nearby toilets.

Ms Bennet said as the toilets were close by it made sense to look at taking on responsibility for them and opening them more regularly.

"Especially when you've got families with little children in the park [who] don't tell you they want to go until the last minute," she said.

The toilets also needed a bit of a spruce up prior to reopening, Ms Bennet said.

"They were seriously covered in cobwebs to a point where one of my staff members who was volunteering with me to clean them said she wouldn't do it until the cobwebs had been removed."

Ms Bennet conceded it was probably one of the least desirable jobs she had been involved with.

However, she added: "You could really see where you had been, so there was a bit of job satisfaction in that way."

"They are definitely a lot cleaner."

The toilets are now open daily Wednesday to Sunday.

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