Clinton Rogers: Response to my save our public loos campaign

But I find myself drawn into politics with a small ‘p’ – mainly as a result of a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my prostate condition and how I was about to start a campaign to save our public loos.

Well, that column got quite a response. The first was from a senior councillor who wanted to talk to me, to illuminate my mind on why the council’s money cupboard was so bare.

It was, they said, largely down to the soaring cost of adult social care – and a broken system for financing local government. So things like public loos had to go.

Yet in an email from Taunton resident Dave Orr, I got a completely story.

He’s spent a lot of time studying the accounts of Somerset Council and neighbouring authorities and says: “My gut instinct is something isn’t right.”

The public toilets on Paul Street in Taunton. (Image: Newsquest)

It’s too complicated an argument to go into detail here, but in essence he wants to know how a similar authority with similar issues, Wiltshire, is in a far healthier state.

So now I’m mightily confused.

But luckily as I’m no longer a card carrying investigative journalist, I will leave it to those much younger and brighter than me to try to unravel the mystery, to get to the real truth. Good luck there!

I was though highly amused by an email I received from Charles Henderson, who, like me, feels public loos are an essential human right.

He wrote to Somerset Council querying why the loos in Paul Street, Taunton, were closed.

The reply he got said the issue was that the locks were faulty and getting parts was proving difficult, so the best option was closing them to the public.

As Mr Henderson put it, “not an impressive response!”

Now I know this is thinking outside the box, but I have an idea for the council: How about just get some new locks, or even new doors?

Just a thought … and I won’t be invoicing you for the idea!