Public toilets are in such a poor state that two councillors want portable loos brought in until the council can sort out its mess.
Conservative councillors Robert Nemeth and Samer Bagaeen said that they had received several complaints from residents about the problem.
And Councillor Nemeth has submitted a motion which is due to be debated by Brighton and Hove City Council at a meeting next week.
The motion, published this week, said: “This council recognises huge public dissatisfaction over the current state of the public toilets across the city.”
Councillor Nemeth has requested that the council considers “the immediate provision of portaloos where appropriate”.
He has asked council chief executive Geoff Raw “to widely communicate existing information regarding the list of proposed refurbishment dates for each toilet block”.
And he wants the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee to order a report “which outlines options for other interim measures”.
Councillor Nemeth, who represents Wish ward, said that he had heard a lot of complaints during a meeting of the Friends of Hove Lagoon.
He said: “The state of public loos along the stretch of West Hove extending to Hove Lagoon are an embarrassment and there are big gaps where there is none.
“Near the Hove Lawns café, residents have recently spoken of filthy facilities, with toilet seats covered in excrement, questioning how Brighton and Hove City Council could consider them acceptable.”
As visitor numbers rise again, Councillor Nemeth said that he was also concerned about the lack of toilets in the centre of Brighton including the condition of those in Pavilion Gardens.
He said: “The public toilets at Pavilion Gardens are in a terrible state and antiquated and many residents have complained.
“These are in Brighton’s main tourist and heritage zone which is visited by many people and the continuing poor state of public conveniences reflects very badly on the city.
“These public conveniences have been targeted by anti-social behaviour and many people feel unsafe using them.”
Councillor Nemeth said that, despite being located next to one of Brighton’s main tourist attractions, the Royal Pavilion, “the Pavilion Gardens have been left to become one of the least safe areas of Brighton, recording a high number of sexual assaults.”
Councillor Bagaeen said that an upgrade for Brighton and Hove’s public toilets should be tied in with Safer Streets funding from the government.
He said: “There is currently a window of opportunity to improve the situation at both Pavilion Gardens and Hove seafront and our Conservative councillors are pushing for these opportunities to be taken.
“As a result of the deteriorating crime statistics, the council has recently been given a Safer Streets grant from the government for £69,969 to make improvements to the lighting and installation of CCTV in Pavilion Gardens following a bid from the Police and Crime Commissioner.”
The motion is due to be debated by the full council at Hove Town Hall next Thursday (21 July). The meeting is scheduled to start at 4.30pm and to be webcast on the council’s website.
Provision also needs to made for the upkeep, including very frequent patrols or an attendant, because it seems that everything is a target for vandalism and anti-social behaviour.
I’m enjoying this series of Tories standing in front of things looking angry.
After the conservative leadership mess has been sorted perhaps they can pick up the phone to the new PM and ask for funding to be returned to previous levels so we can afford for these things to be fixed.
Jackie Smith
Another one that quotes funding forgetting our council receive additional benefits from other sources like business taxes that it never had before.
You’re aware of course, that BHCC have set aside a budget for toilet refurbishment, a budget incidentally, that they have taken some funds from to top up the proposed ‘Vanity’ refurbishment at Hove.
I’m wondering what will come first, the much needed refurbishment of our toilets that is a priority or this Hove Vanity scheme?
Perhaps we should ‘phone’ our council and ask them to restore our basic requirement to have our rubbish and recycling service back that is paid for via our council taxes, perhaps ask the same of when they are going to clean the filth, muck and grime that adorns our streets and building, a city overgrown with weeds, broken street lamps, paving and pot holes.
Our arches continue to rot away, our toilets decay and our streets representing a jungle are all to obvious to most of us yet our council continue to be blinded.
It is a simple fact, the council needs to deliver basic services and prioritising urgent projects.
Stop with the lame government ‘cuts’, unless you have actual figures of the balance sheet, ie what cuts the Government have been made in budgets against what the council now receive from other sources, ie business rates
the argument falls down flat.
If you did a little research, you will discover the actual ‘cut’ is around 23-26% before any additional funding is taken into account making the gap pocket change in reality.
The council are responsible for the budget they get, the council need to be held accountable if they mis manage that budget.
We get lame excuse after lame excuse, not our fault, Brexit, Covid, short of staff, vehicles, Government cuts, Brexit, Covid, not our fault, staff, vehicle problem, it was our contractor, it was the weather.
We can’t get the staff, yet they find the staff needed to patrol Brighton and slap people with fines left right and center for various offences from a car tyre being a inch over a white line in a parking bay too little Jimmy’s mum getting a fine because a piece of paper fell out an overfull rubbish bin, but of course, paying someone to weed the streets and empty bins costs money as apposed to paying people to make money.
Utter pathetic excuses that are so lame, even a five year old child could come up with better believable ‘excuses’.
The chart you seek is here: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/local-government-funding-england
Jackie Smith
Thanks for the link that confirms my post.
Local authority ‘spending power’ – that is, the amount of money local authorities have to spend from government grants, council tax, and business rates – has fallen by 16% since 2010.
In 2019/20, local authorities in England received 23% of their funding from government grants, 50% from council tax, and 27% from retained business rates – revenue from business rates that they do not send to the Treasury.
Thanks great for confirming all that I said.
Now what about your thoughts on the state of the city ?
If Brighton and Hove City Council cannot be trusted to keep clean facilities for us, they should make it a business rate condition to allow the public to use toilets in cafes, restaurants, pubs and bars without making a purchase. We can then have a cut in our Council Tax rates, which we can then spend elsewhere, maybe even to support such local businesses.
We are all human and all need to use the toilet. Some people need to use the toilet urgently due to health conditions.
Businesses may not want ‘just anyone’ coming in to use their facilities, however, such a kind and compassionate city should allow basic facilities to be open to all.
At the moment, the way that the public toilets are, none of us are left with any dignity!
Baby changing facilities used as a surface to roll joints, diarrhoea up the wall, used period products overflowing onto the floors (just a few things I’ve witnessed).
I’m a born Brightonian and I can’t see why any tourist would want to come here again after witnessing that!
I went to Bournemouth for a day trip and must say, the loos were spotlessly clean, plentiful and easy to find.
BHCC, have a word with Bournemouth and ask them how they do it!
We need a council that takes pride in our city.
Keeping it clean, tidy, litter free, weed free, availability of public toilets – is the basics surely?
I agree, whenever there’s a post about toilets in Brighton I always flick to Bournemouth. They have loads, all free to use and very clean and tidy unlike us.. ridiculous excuses from our council as per usual.
I can recoomend the lavatories at The Grand. It is simply a matter of stolling into the building purposefully, with a polite nod. When I did so on the way to the sale of David Bowie’s art collection at Sotheby’s
I went into the nearby Westbury Hotel whose door was opened for me by one of the staff outside.
This said, there should be more public ones.
Typical Green Party solution – cause the base problem and then get someone else to provide a solution.
It does not sound as if you have eggs over easy for breakfast. You appear to live in a forever-barbed state. My comment was intended with an element of humour
As humorous as my comment about the way the Greens operate – or did this sound too near to the truth for your liking?
Oh – I forgot how much they chortle when they see motorists stuck in queues 😏
I hope they are going be affordable toilets
All the toilets along Hove seafront are disgusting. I think the council need to visit Worthing they are so well kept. The one next to King Alfred does not get cleaned properly .
Over the years successive councils have removed nearly all public toilets in Brighton and Hove, and what remain are left in such a pestilential state, it is amazing that anyone would want to come here. The current council, as with many other important matters, are totally ignoring the problem. They spent a fortune on creating Valley Gardens, but totally ignored the lack of such an important facility there.
Meanwhile, B&H council members are not the only ones who should be lowering their heads in shame. Yesterday afternoon, which must have been one of the busiest times of the year, I was in Churchill Square shopping centre, and saw that the main toilets were closed off, something that occurs frequently there. The only other toilets available were the small ones on the upper floor, and there were long queues of people waiting to use them. I wondered if the cleaning staff had gone on strike. And of course, once the place is closed at night, there is nowhere, nowhere, for anyone to find a public toilet in the area. It is a discrace.
The headline’s an excellent one. ‘Councillors to debate motion on Brighton & Hove’s public toilets’. Perhaps they should do exactly that, in which case they’d soon make a decision to improve them.
Bhcc/ the Greens don’t really care. They have their own agenda based on Green dogma, virtue signalling and wokeism. Provision of essential services takes a back seat
Sorry but the council can’t be that bothered when they keep shutting toilet block after toilet block…
Elm Grove (top)
Elm Grove (bottom)
Open Market (now the level but one cubicle working)
Old Steine
St Peters Church
Clock Tower
The Lanes
Devils Dyke
Dyke Road Park
Sackville Road
Norfolk Square
Upper Rock Gardens
Norton Road (only open weekends) and more all gone..
Harold
There’s also Top of Bear Road and I recall some at Black Rock (by the gas works).
Shouldn’t motions be passed IN rather than ON the public toilets?
Well, they are quite constipated anyway, so it would not make much difference.