Council toilet closures blamed on DDA

By Cathy Reay

Local authorities are using the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) as an excuse to close public toilets, a committee of MPs has claimed.

According to the report by the Commons communities and local government committee, many councils claim they cannot afford access adaptations required by the DDA and have used this as an excuse to shut their public toilets.

The committee report estimates that the number of public toilets in the UK between 2000 and 2008 fell by nearly a sixth, from around 5,410 to 4,423. But it claims that the number of these toilets with facilities for disabled people rose by about the same proportion, to 3,353, between 1994 and 2000.

Wheelchair-user Graham Bool, a freelance photographer, said: “Local authorities are just trying to shift blame onto us. And because of the way these situations are explained, the public end up resenting us too – we’re ‘carrying the can’. With fewer public toilets, people end up pissing in the street, but is it not more expensive to hire services to scrub them clean?”

A British Toilet Association spokesman said: “Local authorities have used the DDA compliance excuse. That’s a fact.

“Public toilets should be available for everyone, including women, the elderly and people with mental and physical disabilities.”

A spokeswoman for the Changing Places consortium, which campaigns to ensure there is a toilet with a bench, hoist and plenty of space in all big public venues, said: “We are pleased that local authorities are now being encouraged to reverse the decline in the number of public toilets and to ensure that they are fully accessible.”

The British Standards Institute is currently reviewing the provision of accessible public toilets.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said: “The DDA only requires service-providers to do what is ‘reasonable’ in all the circumstances, including the cost of the adjustment and its practicability. No public service should have to close down just because it is not ‘reasonable’ to make adjustments so that it is accessible to disabled people.”
27 October, 2008

Pictured: Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson opening London’s first Changing Places public toilet, to mark the International Day of Disabled People last December