Council closes toilets to rethink spending a penny

Shap Parish Council said it was considering a paid entry system for the village's public toilets

A village's public toilets used by both residents and many walkers and visitors have closed because the parish council can no longer afford to run them.

Shap Parish Council said it had attempted to raise funding to cover their cost and hoped to reopen them with a charge introduced for their use.

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron said earlier in September the toilets were "not only important for people in the village but for the many visitors doing the Coast to Coast walk".

Residents are concerned the closure would particularly hit walkers and cyclists, with one saying: "We don't want them going in the fields."

The 190-mile (305km) Coast to Coast route, from St Bees Head in Cumbria to Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire, was devised in 1973 by author Alfred Wainwright.

Thousands of people take it on each year, and pass through the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors.

During a debate on national trails on 9 September, Mr Farron said villages like Shap benefited from people walking through them and parish and district councils should "do everything in their power" to maintain good services and facilities.

Toilets 'taken for granted'

The parish council took over responsibility for the conveniences from the former Eden District council about five years ago and was given funding to cover four years.

Money from donation boxes and income from the monthly farmers' market kept the toilets open for a further year.

But council chair Jean Jackson said the funding had now run out.

"We really wanted to highlight the plight of public toilets," she said.

"How much they're taken for granted, the fact that local villages and communities have to run toilets that are not really used by them, but by passers-by, tourists, workmen."

The council said it was applying for grants to update the toilets and was considering a pay-to-use entry system with a view to re-opening them by Spring next year.

"Mostly we want Shap to provide a welcome, and that welcome includes providing a toilet facility," Ms Jackson said.

It comes after Milnthorpe Parish Council closed its public toilets in August over "regular abuse" and spiralling maintenance costs.

Shap Parish Council said the closure also highlighted the fact villages had to fund facilities that were mainly used by passers-by and tourists, rather than residents.

It said it was working very hard to get funding to refurbish the toilets so people could pay to use them and further information would be shared as the project progressed.