Dundee City Council has been paying over £8 for each person to visit Broughty Ferry’s award-winning public toilets.
The high subsidy for spending a penny provides a context for the decision to close the convenience at the end of next month as part of a range of cost-saving measures.
Broughty Ferry councillor Ken Guild, who is also leader of the SNP administration, said that of all the issues stirred up by the package of £14.9 million of savings, the closure of the Queen Street public toilets had proved the least controversial.
The conveniences next to the Queen Street car park won the Scottish Loo of the Year award in 2003 and were complimented for their high standards of cleanliness and their overall condition. They were also available to disabled people 24-hours-a-day all year round through the RADAR national key scheme.
In recent years their use decreased — with one factor the high number of cafes, pubs and hotels in Broughty Ferry with customer toilets — and the toilets came to the attention of the local authority when seeking services that could be cut to balance the books, freeze the council tax and avoid compulsory redundancies.
A report to councillors by head of waste management Jim Laing noted the toilets are costing £135,000 a year including wages, materials and other overheads, but last year its total income was only £3322 — representing the equivalent of a cost of over £8 per visit.
During the past 10 years the council has been reducing the number of toilets it provides — largely as a result of low use. Mr Laing successfully proposed that the toilet block be closed and replaced by an automatic public convenience (APC) at a suitable site.
Three of the four staff at the toilets have applied for early retirement or redundancy, so the closure will not entail any staff transfers.
Disabled people who paid £7 for a key for the existing toilets under the RADAR scheme will be able to use the new toilets.
Mr Guild said there were cost advantages. The new unit will save £111,000 in the next financial year and be available to all people round the clock. The existing staffed one closes at 5.30pm.
He added, “Of all the issues connected with the savings, this has been the one which generated least comment. It was costing the council a lot of money to keep it open, but hardly anyone was using it.
“We are replacing it with a service which should be better because it will be available all the time — and it will also be cheaper.”
As for the location of the new toilets, a Dundee City Council spokesman said, “We are actively looking at suitable locations within the Broughty Ferry shopping area. We hope that work will be able to start as soon as possible once a site is chosen.”