Public toilets campaigners outside Islington Town Hall yesterday (Thursday)

TOILET campaigners met with council chiefs yesterday (Thursday) about the state of the borough’s public loos after a whistle-stop tour carried out earlier that day proved that, yes, they were nearly all still out of action.

The closure of six of the borough’s eight public toilets follows on from comments made at the Town Hall last week by Islington’s health chief, who said they were “very sorry” and admitted it was not “good enough”.

Promising to spend more than just a penny remedying the situation, Cllr Nurullah Turan told the council chamber: “We will replace the old automated public toilets that are now near the end of their working lives. It’s hard to find spare working parts for these toilets when they have a fault, and they are vulnerable to anti-social behaviour.

“The current situation, where old toilets are regularly fixed and then quickly go out of service again, isn’t good enough and we are very sorry for the inconvenience that has been causing.”

The council plan to spend £1.2million replacing the automated toilets with new automated toilets – but are yet to confirm when this will start. They have also this week launched a drive to encourage local businesses to sign up to an app that allows the public to use their toilets without the need to buy anything.

Holloway Road

The Town Hall hope more than 500 businesses will take part in scheme, which can be accessed through smartphones by downloading an app called Toilets4London. Once signed in with a location, it provides a map of the nearest public loos.

But for campaigners such as Cornelius McAfee, who is appalled at the lack of public facilities since cancer forced him into more frequent and urgent toilet trips, Cllr Turan’s apology and his renewal plans are too little too late.

Describing how the council had “fobbed off” campaigners by not answering their questions in a public council meeting last week and instead choosing to meet with them privately, Mr McAfee said they were “very disappointed”.

He added: “We are campaigning for improvements to Islington’s community infrastructure. If you just look at the chaotic, incoherent website information on toilets you learn nothing.

“A quick whiz round Islington’s public lavatories reveals the shocking truth: a borough with a quarter-of-a-million people is not providing clean, safe toilet facilities. One temporary toilet was working, and of course the maintained one in Chapel Street. It’s absolutely diabolical.”

Newington Green

The Tribune was told by a council spokesperson it was not allowed to attend the “private meeting” as “only those invited by the council are permitted to attend”.

John McGeachy, from Age UK London, said: “I think it’s terrible it’s got to such a sorry state of affairs, and I think those that we spoke to today seemed pretty embarrassed and apologetic.

“I don’t want to condemn them too much for the situation as it is, but we do want to hold them to account over the next 12 months to see if they do genuinely improve provision.

“I feel fairly positive they took us seriously, which is the least they could do. From the state of the toilets, this has been going on for years – it should never have got so bad. It’s about caring for residents and it’s a quality of life issue.

“It’s an issue that’s been ignored for too long and they’re slowly waking up to it.”

However he called for a community toilet scheme rather than something found only on an app, and said they should re-introduce public toilets with attendants to go alongside automated toilets, which are likely to “fail again in the future”.