My Lords, I first pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Randerson for the campaigning which she does on this issue, together with colleagues and campaigning organisations. Not very long ago—perhaps 15 or 20 years ago—there was a view that
public lavatories were on their way out. I hate to say this, but they were being flushed away, first because it was thought that they were not necessary and, secondly, because of cuts in local government spending which, as we know, have been particularly strong in the last 10 years. The organisations and groups that campaigned for them then were felt to be rather old-fashioned and out of date. That view has substantially changed now. People are coming to understand that they are so important if we want people to spend time on British beaches, at holiday resorts, using car parks in the hills, and going to town centres, particularly ones which do not have large, emporium-type shops whose lavatories you can use.
But who provides them? I do not know what proportion of public lavatories in this country are provided by town and parish councils, but I suspect that it is a lot higher than the proportion of the population of the country that is covered by them. They tend to cover wider, rural areas that tourists go to, main roads and so on. As my noble friend said, it is getting increasingly difficult to find public lavatories in big cities. They are being closed down. In cities, you can usually find somewhere to go in a pub, a restaurant or a large shop. That is not so in the countryside. It is very difficult to find a parish council, of any size, or a town council that does not own and run at least one public lavatory. Many of them have more than that. They are vital.
I will now get on to something which is a hobby-horse of mine at the moment. I spoke on it in the debate on the Budget last week and I will speak on it on every available occasion that comes up. These democratically elected local bodies called town councils are becoming increasingly important in towns—small and medium-sized ones particularly, but some large ones—which have lost their own local authority councils and which are increasingly losing them as the country moves towards unitary authorities. In place after place, it is these councils, the representatives of the local community, which are providing public lavatories.
In most cases, that is because they are heritage lavatories, in the sense that they were bequeathed to them by a previous town council or, in many cases, the district councils and unitary councils in the boroughs, which previously ran the facilities, where they have a town or parish council, are passing them over to them and saying, “Here it is—we’ll give it to you. It’s not exactly an asset, but nevertheless we will give it to you. It’ll cost you money to run, and it is your responsibility to decide whether you want to keep this going in your area, because we cannot afford it anymore.” That is happening in more and more places.
The problem is that, when a town or parish council decides that it wants a new public lavatory, how is it going to finance it? Very often, town councils are now charging levels of council tax which only a few years ago would have been thought extraordinarily high and impossible, because they are taking on more and more facilities such as parks, leisure centres, community centres and all sorts of things and having to pay for them. The boroughs, districts and unitary authorities are not doing them anymore and cannot afford them, whereas the town councils can put the council tax up and, if local people agree to it, they can keep those facilities going.
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How do they get new public lavatories? The problem is that the Government do not have a funding relationship with parish and town councils. I have asked various questions of the Minister who is sitting here tonight about this, and the answer that I get all the time is that the Government have no powers to fund parish and town councils. I find that extraordinary, as they have powers to do everything else; they have powers to buy new nuclear warheads and all sorts of other things, but apparently they cannot fund parish councils. That is what the Minister keeps telling me, although I do not believe it. I think that there are ways in which they could—but, if they cannot, the law needs changing.
With regard to revenue spending, the money goes to the districts, counties or unitaries, and the Government claim that they advise those bodies to pass money on to the parishes. Nobody in the parishes ever hears about that advice or knows where it comes from, but that is what the Government are saying—but these are strapped authorities that cannot possibly afford that. When they have special funding, such as revenue funding for all the work that has been done for Covid, it goes to the principal councils, and the towns, which might well have put in a huge amount of time and effort and done wonderful work on Covid, miss out. When they want new public lavatories, they cannot get the grants to do it.
The amendment from my noble friend Lady Pinnock mentions Changing Places. It is an excellent scheme, but I am told by the parish councils that it does not apply to town and parish councils; they cannot apply for Changing Places grants for producing new and better amenities for disabled people as the other authorities can. There seems to be a complete void of government thinking with regard to town and parish councils and the fact that they can often do things, including providing public lavatories, which are much more economic and often better than the authorities from which they have taken things on.
This is a little tangential to the purpose of this Bill but, nevertheless, it is a point that I will make time and again until somebody in government starts listening.