Now Harborough Tories won't let you go the the loo

The big news hereabouts today is that:

Harborough District Council wants to close the toilets attached to the Market Hall, in Northampton Road, as well as four others across the district in a bid to save £50,000 a year in maintenance costs.

The plans were approved by the council's all-Tory executive committee at a meeting on Monday and will go to a meeting of full council for ratification next Thursday, February 25.

So now Harborough Tories won't even let you go to the loo. They are even worse than they were in my days on the district council.

Well done to the Lib Dem councillor Cllr Barbara Johnson for opposing the plans:

"It will hit market traders and customers to the cafe there because the nearest public toilets will be the Commons car park on the other side of Northampton Road.

"Quite a lot of elderly people visit the cafe so it will cause them quite an inconvenience.

"It's a £50,000 saving for the council but it doesn't seem the right way to go if we want to attract more visitors to the town."

And well done to the Harborough Mail in picking up her comments in its headline:

Loo closure would be an inconvenience

If things are really so bad that the council cannot afford to spend a penny they should investigate the Community Toilet Scheme developed by the Liberal Democrats in Richmond. This:

enables local businesses like pubs, restaurants and shops, to work together with the Council to make more clean, safe and accessible toilets available to the public. The Council has recently extended membership of the Community Toilet Scheme with more business members and Council owned sites providing access to the public during opening hours.There are now nearly 100 premises taking part in the scheme.

If you are interested (or desperate) go to the Richmond upon Thames Lib Dems site or a list of all the businesses taking part.

But devising a scheme like that would take initiative and imagination: two qualities that have traditionally been in short supply amongst the local Conservatives.

Later. It has been suggested to me that this scheme, or a similar one, was originally introduced while the Tories were running Richmond. Whatever the truth of that, I think that such schemes are the way forward if councils are finding it hard to provide their own facilities.

One thing is clear: they cannot just wash their hands of the problem. (Do you see what I did there?)