‘I don’t want to buy a £4 coffee just so I can use the loo’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj48571qq7vo
by Friendly_Fall_
‘I don’t want to buy a £4 coffee just so I can use the loo’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj48571qq7vo
by Friendly_Fall_
39 comments
The UK really needs to do something about its lack of public toilets
> “If you ask nicely, more people are likely to let you use the toilet,” she says.
This always works for me.
If there is a nearby hotel when you are out for the day, I always find they are awesome. Since so many people come and go, nobody will raise an eyebrow. Much cleaner than public toilets.
So we build lots of public toilets. Great. Has anyone here seen the state of public toilets in the UK? It’s like feral jackals immediately find them to make a mess in them and break whatever they can.
Which means it costs a lot to build them out of prison grade materials and they have to be cleaned every hour. But no one wants to pay more taxes for that.
And that is why we can’t have nice things.
The thing is we have a ton of public toilets around me. They all charge 30p to use them, and that’s supposed to be for their maintenance.
All of them stink, most of them don’t flush properly, the sinks don’t work properly. Even though paying keeps the people doing drugs out, the council still doesn’t maintain them
I’ll usually look for a McDonald’s or wetherspoons
I don’t mind paying to use a public toilet IF that toilet is clean and not covered in shite.
Not once when in Germany did I encounter a disgusting paid-for toilet, ranging from 20c-75c. In the UK, I’ve paid 50p-£1 for a shit-covered toilet with no soap. It’s a fucking joke.
Never use anything public in the UK. There is no respect for anything.
Supermarkets are great for free loos. M&S have the nicest.
I have issues with my bladder and bowels, so public toilets are vital and a lack of them really does restrict where I go, because everything has to be planned around “What if?” Even my jogging route is planned around a public toilet. I do not think people understand how isolating this can be for people like me.
But it’s a private toilet for paying customers. Not a public toilet where any wrongun can come and go. I don’t want to pay £4 to use it either but they have to maintain it so I completely understand it’s not for anyone to use
We have vandalism because we have a Police Service that is paid to uphold the Law but can’t be bothered
Who the fuck buys a coffee to use the toilet? Just walk in and use it… You think the minimum wage employees give a shit?
My solution? Councils to offer a small council tax rebate to cafe’s/ shops that place a sign in their window offering their loos to the public.
I remember when they had pissers in the middle of Manchester, the place stunk of piss more than usual I don’t think they lasted long.
Is this really a problem? You’re never that far from a McDonalds or a Costa or a Tesco or any number of other chains that have a toilet. Even if they have a customers-only policy the minimum wage workers will probably not even notice you, let alone chase you down and ask you to leave if you try to use the loo. Whose to say you’re not gunna buy something after you relieve yourself?
Even if there were public toilets available I’d much rather wait until we get to Tesco because they probably won’t be in disrepair and smelling of piss.
Being a woman is dreadful. I have had to humiliatingly wee in alleyways , worried about being seen or on cctv or god forbid someone attacking me. I could even become a registered sex offender for street pissing.
Yet if you’re a man, a London council will build you a stinky plastic urinal in full view of everyone right on street corners, public gardens. I have bumped into people mid urination when Soho has been too busy. It’s so incredibly unfair, and makes me feel uncomfortable. If there were just public toilets then those urinals wouldn’t have to ruin streets and women wouldn’t be risking kidney damage everytime we go out.
If people can’t put their litter in the bin, what makes you think that they will clean up after using public toilets. We can’t have nice things because the worst of us ruins it for the best of us.
Sorry but UK culture is terrible, we literally cannot have nice things
Europe really can’t do public toilets, I don’t think UK is worse than European average. East Asia seems to know what they’re doing. I’ve been to Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Hong, Kong, Korea etc, there’s toilets at stations or local malls. All kept clean.
Even middle of the country side, the Japanese station have clean squat toilets. Working flush with loo rolls. Maybe not soap though.
A lot of councils pay businesses to let the public use their toilets as part of Community Toilet Schemes.
There is a map of all the signed up businesses in the UK
[https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/](https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/)
Ask for a glass of tap water, it’s free and you’re now a customer
Thus is another reason why town centres are struggling. If I have to pay to use the toilet, why not just order from home where toilets are free?
I have no problem paying to use toilets, as long as they’re in good condition. But when the excuse is, “We charge so they stay clean”, and they’re still filthy and stink of piss?
You can get fucked, I’m climbing over your crappy turnstile.
Run down carparks with massive potholes and signs up everywhere saying they aren’t liable for damage fuck me off just as much. What am I actually paying for?!
Speaking from a Glasgow perspective, our public loos have been closed mostly since the turn of the millennium due to antisocial behaviour and drug taking. Drugs are another topic entirely but antisocial behaviour can largely be resolved at home: learn to control your behaviour and vices before you become a parent and be a true role model for your kids. Kids learn their behaviour from somewhere.
Just walk into any pub. Haven’t used a public toilet in decades.
Fun fact it’s illegal to deny someone access to a toilet in Scotland
People ruin stuff like this because we aren’t capable of being considerate.
The local council closed down the public toilets because they are constantly left disgusting and operating costs rise.
Our business gets a sharp rise in toilet use requests. We repair stuff and our toilets are through the staff room not public facing so we have to escort people.
Some people can’t toilet nicely or clean up after themselves, so some customers come back into reception to have a go that there was pee on your toilet seat or skidmarks left.
Now I have a reception team that’s supposed to be dealing with tech dealing with toilet complaints. They aren’t paid to clean toilets either so it falls on either me as the owner or I have to pay for a cleaner to come in every 2-3 hours.
The no brain answer is to close the toilets to the public. You get a few complaints for a week or so then you go back to doing tech
Then don’t?
Just walk in and use it, no-one is going to stop you
Unpopular opinion – businesses can operate as they wish. Why aren’t we questioning councils about the shortage of public toilets?
I had that once when I was working in Cirencester. Not sure what caused it, but I had some sort of stomach upset that made me need (and I mean _need_) the loo every five minutes. Went to one of the cafes, left the loo _clean_, then needed to come back in again five minutes later. Got yelled at that I needed to buy a drink because they’re customer loos (even though I was a regular in there to buy drinks), so I bought the cheapest bottle of water I could find in there and left without another word. Never went back.
Me and my friend were in London and she is disabled. She has limited availability to walk and we went to multiple restaurants for her to go to the toilet, we found a Costa and saw a queue of people holding a receipt with a code for access to the toilet.
Still to this day it upsets me what she went through. People have no compassion.
The public toilets thing is really true. They closed the majority of ones in my town so now everyone uses McDonalds. You’d think people would keep it clean as we don’t have anywhere else free to go, but nope, it gets trashed. I can imagine it will be a coded door soon also.
It really is difficult as someone who suffers with an hyperactive bladder due to MS.
I’m a (fairly) young man and seem to all around to be perfectly healthy, however, at the drop of a hat, I can urgently need to use the toilet. It really restricts where I go sometimes as I’ll have to consider where the nearest toilets will be and how accessible they are.
Public toilets are almost non existent and most restaurants won’t let you in unless a customer. Some stores, even though they’re huge, don’t even have toilets for customers (I’m looking at you Matalan!). I was once caught short going to a concert and the nearest toilet was a Nero – door locked, customers only, but there was a queue at the till – that wasn’t going to work. Fortunately I a young girl in a posh bar next door let me use their toilet, but by that point I had *dribbled* a little, which was hugely embarrassing and meant I had to tie my hoodie around my waist (despite it being freezing out) to spare my blushes.
The thing that really pisses me off about it though, is that I’m lucky, I’m a guy! If it gets really bad, I can try and find a corner that’s hidden and do my business and hope I’m not seen, but many more women suffer bladder issues than guys and they can’t discreetly relieve themselves, and then of course there’s children who may only recently be toilet trained too.
Tl:dr We need more public toilets
This is an England problem not UK. In Scotland you can go into any establishment and use the bathroom.
If you live on the canals, there are toilet and shower facilities available for free once you’ve purchased a Canal and River Trust key. These facilities generally also have “Elsan” points for disposing of the contents of toilet cassettes.
The absolute fucking state they get left in by a minority of absolute filthy animals is the reason we can’t have nice stuff for free. I mean just subhuman stuff – shit and piss everywhere, used toilet paper on the floor, people wiping with those thick paper hand towels instead of toilet roll and blocking the bogs, people tipping all sorts of liquid and semi-liquid waste in the elsans.
It’s not a poverty thing, nor is it education. My grandparents grew up in poverty, and to my knowledge neither of them did “O” levels, but they didn’t drop litter, they didn’t smash things and they knew how to use the toilet. Saying (as someone did earlier) that it’s poverty or lack of education that is the problem is simply bollocks.
I’m just going to state the obvious here.
Pubs, supermarkets and parks all have toilets.
The reason we don’t have more is because people abuse them. There’s simply no accountability.
Just bring back paid toilets, some city’s have them, they’re common in Europe. As long as the charge isn’t horrendous (20p-50p £1 max) it wouldn’t be an issue.
In Plymouth we don’t even have bus stop shelters anymore, so all the pensioners (and everyone else) who rely on buses for travel are just left to get absolutely drenched when it rains now.
Argument is the maintenance was too expensive.
Want us to be somewhere long enough to spend? Make sure there are toilets
Otherwise don’t moan that the high street is being boycotted, online shopping doesn’t charge you to use your own bathroom
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