Nearly half of London councils are paying local businesses up to £1000 annually to allow public use of their facilities through the Community Toilet Scheme.
Community Toilet Schemes are formal partnerships where local authorities pay businesses like pubs, cafes, and restaurants to allow the public to use their toilets for free.
Richmond upon Thames became the first authority to roll out the scheme in 2005, and a further 13 London boroughs have implemented their own version since.
The recent popularity of the scheme comes amid a national shortage of public toilets, with the British Toilet Association estimating a 40% decrease in provision since 2000.
At face value, the data suggests Community Toilet Schemes are a viable tool for councils to increase public toilet provision.
Tower Hamlets, which rolled out its Community Toilet Scheme in 2023, has a total of 124 public toilets, compared with neighbouring Hackney, which has just 23.
The NE Londoner collated the data from official council statistics publicly available on their sites and cross-verified the data with online tracker Toilet Map, which did highlight some inconsistencies.
One person, for example, complained they were refused use of the facilities in a restaurant on Toilet Map, despite it being an official partner of the Tower Hamlets Community Toilet Scheme.
The comment read: “I was refused use of the toilet when I asked staff where it was.
“They said the toilet is for customers only and that I had to buy a coffee if I wanted to use it.”
To test the claim, the NE Londoner visited cafes, pubs and restaurants involved in Tower Hamlets’ Community Toilet Scheme but found all ten of the businesses surveyed allowed use of the toilet on first ask.
And this included the restaurant which was the subject of the comment above.
The result suggests Tower Hamlets’ scheme does in fact seem to be working as intended, but the question of whether it’s a viable long-term replacement for public toilets remains.
Raymond Martin, managing director of the British Toilet Association, says while Community Toilet Schemes can help, local authorities must continue to invest in their own facilities.
He said: “Community Toilet Schemes are great, and it’s important that councils are supporting residents and local businesses – but it’s background support, and cannot be the main provision.
“We have a situation where local authorities are partnering up with twenty businesses in a small area, and then closing the council-run toilets.
“When businesses realise they are the only local toilet provision, and can’t handle the numbers coming in, they pull out of the scheme – so good council provision is essential for it to work.”
Tower Hamlets Council declined to comment.
Featured image credit: Sung Jin Cho via Unsplash
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