Community Amenities Working Group (Loo Committee)
Background to the group: The Working Group meeting at the end of February was told that Eden District has shelved the decision to close public toilets across the area, subject to the outcome of a whole review of spending to be carried out by the interim Chief Executive. There will be a report in late September 2011. While this is good news in one way, in another it may present problems if, after a delay of 6 months, the decision to close is taken, leaving only 6 months to arrange alternative management.
The Group decided to continue to lobby for the Council not to close the toilets and to ask the residents to support this by asking candidates in the local election for their views on the matter to ensure it is a known issue for them to answer. Also, work will continue to bring the issue to the attention of visitors, to monitor the number of visitors by sample surveys and use of the email duftontoilets@gmail.com to collect comments. It is also proposed to explore the opening of a twitter account as means of communicating the issue more widely.
Meeting 27th April 2011:
Short questionnaires were made available in the toilets on 24th April and by the time of the meeting there had been 55 responses, representing 170 users. The comments were, without exception, supportive of the need for the toilets and some users declared themselves willing to pay a small charge. The information will be useful in pressing EDC to retain the toilets, or to show the level of use if we have to look for alternative funding.
A survey, sorry yes it was another one, was posted to all residents and many replied promptly, thank you. If you haven’t yet replied can you please do so, either by delivering the paper copy to the Village Tea Room or by using the online version at the village website. We will report on the results after the next meeting.
The village has been incredibly busy in the period to Easter and Easter Day saw the village full of visitors.
The new EDC Councillor for our area, Dorothy Spence, has been in touch and expressed her support for the campaign.
A letter to the Herald was one of 3 printed on the same day all setting out concerns about the proposed closures in a number of villages. We will continue to use the press and other media to publicise the issue.
The email duftontoilets@gmail.com and twitter @duftontoilets are easy ways to keep in touch and we hope that you will avail yourselves of these ways of making comments and suggestions to the group.
The Working Party Members are:
Morgan Donnelly (Chair)
Gillian Bryan
Barbara Scurr
Richard Scurr
Caite Guest
Ron Barker
Kevin Brighurst
David Carter.
The Working Group will keep you up to date through this web site. The next meeting will be on 2nd June 2011 at 8pm in the Village Tea Room.