and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Albert Street Public Conveniences Background On 26 January 2021 Council resolved to reduce the 2021-2022 budget for Albert Street WCs from £41,210 to £20,1051 representing a 50% cut in the previous year’s budget and therefore provided for 6 months of operation. A further report was submitted to Council on 23 February 2021 and a copy of that report is provided at Appendix I for the benefit of new Councillors. This resulted in the following resolution “that a public consultation be undertaken to seek community views on the provision of public toilets. The consultation would include providing information and seeking views on refurbishing the existing toilets and the costs of running the toilets and explaining why the Town Council has taken the budget action it has, seeking views on re-provision of toilets elsewhere if a suitable site can be found, provision of a community toilet scheme and consultation on having no public conveniences at all. It was also agreed that if Members had any proposals to be added to the consultation officers were delegated to include these in the consultation if they considered then appropriate.” (Minute reference FC20/21-192.) No proposals have been put forward by Members since that date. Current position The Town Clerk has now prepared a draft consultation to be undertaken as soon as possible. The consultation will take the form of an on-line survey which will also be available for completion on paper. The survey will last 6 weeks and will be open to anyone who lives in or visits Bletchley. The survey will be advertised on the Town Council’s own website and social media and will be publicised to the following organisations/groups:

 Bletchley Residents Associations and Town Council Community Mailing list members  MK Council Bletchley Ward Members  Council  Simpson and Ashland Parish Council  Members of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Deal Board  Bus companies and Bus Users Group  GP Surgeries  Bletchley Schools  Daisychain Family Centre/Saplings Family Centre  Bletchley Faith Groups  Relevant Bletchley/Milton Keynes Charities (eg Age UK Alzheimer’s Society, Scope, Q:Alliance, Shelter etc) and MK Community Foundation The following draft consultation has been prepared in line with the Town Council’s community engagement policy.

1 Budget figures exclude direct staff costs, insurance and other items included in other lines in the budget

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Draft

Proposed Consultation on Public Toilets in Bletchley Town Centre Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council currently provides public toilets in a building in Albert Street, Bletchley. (Picture) These toilets are open daily from Monday to Saturday and are free at the point of use. Based on pre-Covid monitoring the public toilets are well used with approximately 91,300 visits per year (excluding the disabled toilet). The public toilet building is now in need of refurbishment. The building it is owned by Milton Keynes Council. It is let to the Town Council which pays for all the repairs and maintenance to the fabric of the building as well as the costs of running the toilets using tax payers’ money. Milton Keynes Council could require the Town Council to vacate the premises at any time. Although this is not likely to happen immediately, it is possible that there will be changes to the town centre in the near future which could affect the building. The Town Council is concerned about refurbishing the building when we have no security of tenure. We are also concerned about the ongoing costs of maintaining the toilets and keeping them clean and safe. To help us decide on future short term and long term actions we are asking local people for their views. Please answer the questions below and include your comments on any aspect of our public toilet provision which might help us plan for the future. The survey is anonymous but you are asked to provide your postcode so that we can analyse the results by residents and by people who don’t live in our area. Please complete the survey once only.

1 At the moment the Town Council provides public toilets in Albert Street. Based on pre- Covid usage figures the cost per individual visit is approximately 43p. Without doing any significant refurbishment work the average total cost of the toilet service per year is over £40,000. Do you think this service is good value for money? Yes/No Comments

2 Based on these costs should the Town Council continue to provide public toilets in the centre of Bletchley? Yes/No If you have answered no please say why

3 Albert Street public toilets are open Monday to Saturday. How often do you use them? Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Rarely/Never Comments

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

4 If you have used the public toilets recently do you think they need to be refurbished? Yes/No Comments

5 If you do not use the public toilets please tell us why Comments

6 The Town Council could introduce charging for use of the toilets. The charge would probably be around 40p per visit and payment would possibly be by bank card rather than cash. This would reduce the cost of running the toilets though we anticipate usage would decrease so the service would not become cost neutral. Should the Town Council introduce charging for use of public toilets in this way? Yes/No Comments

7 The Town Council could use the money it currently spends on toilets to pay local shops and cafes to make their toilets available to residents during their opening hours. This is known as a community toilet scheme. Participating businesses would have a sign in their window advertising that they were part of the scheme and residents would have to go into the business and ask to use their toilet.

Should the Town Council introduce a community toilet scheme?

Yes/No

Comments

8 If public toilet provision continues where would be the best location for public toilets in Bletchley in the future? Albert Street or nearby the existing toilets/Bus station/Queensway/Other* *Please specify

9 If the public toilets were to be closed how would this affect you? Comments 10 Do you consider yourself disabled? Yes/No

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Comments

11 Are you the main carer for somebody who is vulnerable? (This includes children and/or adults) Yes/No Comments

12 Is there anything else you want to tell us?

13 What is the postcode of your home address? Box for postcode

Thank you for completing this survey. The Town Council will use your input to influence its future decisions. The results of the survey will be published on our website.

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Appendix I – Report to Council 23 February 2021 Albert Street Public Toilets Background On 26 January 2021 Council resolved to reduce the annual budget for Albert St WCs in 2021-2022 to £19,605 (half the budget for 2020/2021). Members agreed to undertake consultation before making any further decisions about public toilet provision. (Minute reference FC20/21-172.) The toilet building is owned by Milton Keynes Council and let to the Town Council on a peppercorn with all maintenance costs falling to the Town Council and with limited security of tenure. Preliminary enquiries to MK Council’s property department suggest that the Council has no firm plans for this site in the near future. This is an initial report requesting instructions from Council so that further work can be done by officers. The value of free public toilets is not explored here though Members are reminded of their duty to consider the needs of the whole community including those who depend on access to public toilets in order to fully participate in community life (eg disabled people, trans people, carers, older people, homeless people etc). Usage Between March and July 2019 a monitoring exercise was undertaken by Healthmatic Ltd to assess usage of the toilets and a summary of the results is below. The disabled toilet was not included in the survey. These results are pre-Covid19 and it is not clear how usage will be affected by subsequent changes in economic and social behaviour. However the figures demonstrate that the WCs are well used (approximately 91,600 visits per year) and there are few publicly accessible toilets elsewhere in the centre of Bletchley.

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Daily Averages - GENTS

Weekdays 705

Weekends 150

Mon Tue Wed

136 146 137

Thu Fri Sat

143 143 148

Sun Full week

2 855

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Daily Averages - LADIES

Weekdays 786

Weekends 191

Mon Tue Wed

159 157 147

Thu Fri Sat

163 160 191

Sun Full week

0 977

Costs The largest running costs for the toilet are cleaning and staff costs. A budget printout for 2020-21 is attached to this report. Daily opening, closing and cleaning is contracted out at a cost of £18,000 per annum to Support Maintenance Services. This contract is due to end of 18 June 2021 (3-year contract which becomes a rolling contract unless notice is given 3 months in advance ie before 17 March 2021). Consumables were budgeted at £6,600 for the year, actual expenditure may be lower due to periods of lock down. The Town Ranger Team visit the WCs twice per day to check the facilities and as required to deal with cleaning or maintenance issues. It is difficult to estimate these costs but working on a very conservative average of half an hour per week day and an additional 4 hours per month in a 50-week year these costs amount to over £2,200 pa excluding any management costs. (NB these costs are excluded from the budget.)

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

The introduction of the toilet rates relief will reduce costs in the future. However, officers do not believe that other running costs can be greatly reduced. Ideally refurbishment work is needed in particular to improve the Ladies toilets in particular which have not been decorated during the last 5 years but all the facilities would benefit from improvement. An outstanding repair to the roof lights at a cost of £5,947.50 has been delayed pending decisions about the toilets but it is recommended by officers that this is not deferred unless the WCs are to be closed imminently. Income For some years West Bletchley Council has contributed £1,000 pa to the running of the costs of these facilities. In previous years approaches have also been made to those bus companies operating out of the bus station to request funding but to date requests have been unsuccessful. Since the budget decision the Clerk has not made further approaches to these or any other third parties as it was believed prudent to wait until the Council had a clearer view of its likely plans and what it was asking for from partners. Cost reduction and income boosting measures Initial advice about cost reduction or income generating measures has been obtained from Healthmatic Ltd who know the building and its location from the monitoring exercise. Formal procurement and quotations have not been requested at this stage. One option is to charge and Healthmatic Ltd suggested that contactless paddlegates could be installed in both the Gents and Ladies entrance. The cost of the installation would be £19,250 including the contactless units and a charge of 40p could be made. Coin payment is not recommended for security reasons. In Healthmatic’s experience the introduction of charging is likely to halve usage therefore an income of approximately £15,000 may be realistic, the utilities bill should reduce by approximately 33% and as fewer consumables would be used there should be a saving of approximately £500. An alternative also proposed by Healthmatic Ltd would be to hand back the current building to MK Council and seek a site for an alternative building nearby. Capital outlay for a two cubicle toilet would be around £83,000 though costs would depend on proximity to services and of course a suitable site would need to be procured. An illustration of a possible building type is provided below.

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Figure 1 Two cubicle public convenience The benefit of this approach is that operational costs per annum including utilities could be reduced. Healthmatic Ltd has advised that running costs for this type of building would be approximately £14,000 per annum but income (again assuming a 40p charge) would be unlikely to exceed £6,000 however the net cost the Council per year would be £8,000 which is much cheaper than the current building. This route depends on finding a site and negotiations with a landowner and may be time consuming to implement (certainly unlikely to be achievable by mid-2021-2022). The Council may feel that charging for public toilets is not acceptable in which case a new building with reduced running costs may still be preferred. If charging is not acceptable the Council will need to seek funding for refurbishment/running costs for the toilets from third parties eg West Bletchley Council, bus companies, local businesses and any other third parties. It will be easier to do this with a clearer policy position and future plan from the Council rather than the only resolved decision so far which is to cut the budget.

Public Consultation Council has indicated it intends to consult the community. It is proposed that a 6-week public consultation is undertaken via an electronic survey publicised on the Council’s website and social media and an identical paper survey which is made available within the toilets and the town centre shops with collecting boxes in these locations. The survey would not be restricted to residents of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford but would be open to all users of the town centre. The Council’s community engagement policy must be taken into account in devising the survey. Given that the spending plan for 2020-2021 has already been reduced it is particularly important that the Council is very clear about what information it is seeking from the public and how it will be used. Officers require further instruction on this matter before a draft consultation can be prepared.

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Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Town Council 8 June 2021

Decision Members are asked to provide guidance to officer on the following matters:

 What options for alternative provision of public toilets should be explored  What information is the council seeking in the public consultation  When and on what basis should contributory funding be requested from third parties  Approach to ongoing maintenance including the repair to roof lights previously deferred by the Finance Committee

D Shephard 5 June 2021