Flushed with success

The news that Gwynedd pubs and cafes are, rather ironically, 'queuing up' to take £500 from the council in return for letting the public use their toilets makes for interesting reading. Public toilets are a major issue in all the local areas, with none in Mostyn Champneys or Parc Llandudno, other than those provided by the businesses themselves.

But it's taken a long time for Gwynedd to catch up with New York, where a city-wide ordnance was enacted decades ago making all public buildings provide toilets for everyone.
Holiday towns and resorts need public toilets; and if those owned by the councils are too dangerous, dirty or simply unpleasant to use then coercing businesses into providing them for visitors seems the way to go.  Vandalism is the oft-quoted reason for the councils not providing them, but it's far less of a problem when people have to walk past security cameras to a toilet hidden away in the large department store - there's a reason why most stores have their toilets on the top floor.

But perhaps the other issue is why people vandalise toilets.  Homebase was forced to close off their toilets, because they were being wrecked on a weekly basis.  Some people might complain about the insidious introduction of cameras everywhere,  but it they do their job, then perhaps we need to put up with them.