PLANS over the future of a Porthcawl public toilet have gone out for consultation in order to see what locals want to happen with them.
The John Street toilets, which are based in a Grade II-listed building in the town, are currently run by Porthcawl Town Council on a licence to occupy from Bridgend County Borough Council with an arrangement in place since 2019.
However with increasing costs to run the 100-year-old facility, alongside another set of public toilets located near Griffin Park, the local town council is asking residents what they would like to see happen to the facility in the future.
The consultation comes after a public meeting which was held by the town council on September 7 to discuss the situation with the toilets which are currently said to be in a poor state of repair with talks looking at the cost of repairing the building.
A report published by Porthcawl Town Council said the cost of running the building in 2023 was estimated to be more than £26,000 with difficulties in budgeting coming from continued vandalism to the site on top of the maintenance costs.
It read: “Annually it is difficult to budget for John Street because of ongoing and unexpected maintenance and for both John Street and Griffin Park due to continued vandalism and antisocial behaviour.”
The town council acknowledged the “necessity” of public toilets for anyone wanting to enjoy public spaces around Porthcawl as well offering a number of solutions for the future of the toilets.
These included terminating the licence to operate and handing the building back to Bridgend council or potentially taking the building from them as part of a community asset transfer (CAT) with £90,000 worth of funding for repairs.
There were potential downsides noted for both of these options as the report indicated the likely outcome of handing the building back to the county council would be its closure while taking the CAT transfer would leave the town council needing to find an additional £120,000 towards the cost of repairs.
Additional options included continuing to run the toilets with the current licence, risking that the toilets could fall into further disrepair, or potentially supporting a group of community volunteers to run them.
There could also be a possibility for the council to be allocated a small plot of land where they could install an all new “custom-built public toilet” as opposed to trying to save the John Street toilets.
Residents will now be able to take part in a six-week consultation period where they will be asked if they want to the toilets remain open or closed with results set to be considered by the town council in the coming months.