Public toilets in Brighton and Hove: Council comes under fire

They said that “insourcing” the cleaning and maintenance from contractor Healthmatic had failed and was the reason behind proposals to close more toilets and bring in charges.

The Tories also criticised Labour for insourcing housing repairs – dispensing with the contractor Mears and bringing the work “in-house”.

As a result, the Tories said, the council has presided over a collapse in the service, affecting thousands of tenants, and he wanted to how many millions of pounds it had cost.

• READ MORE: More than 2,000 people sign new petition to keep toilets open in city's public parks

Conservative councillor Robert Nemeth said: “The council’s insourcing policies are ideological and not driven by any common sense. They are dictated by the unions, not by residents.

“These policies have led to a complete collapse of services and cost city taxpayers millions more than necessary.”

Cllr Nemeth plans to propose a motion at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting on Thursday.

The motion, published in the meeting papers, said: “Insourcing policies that have been pursued by recent administrations have had a detrimental impact on the provision of services to residents including by causing the collapse of several city services including housing repairs and public toilets, directly causing industrial action, costing millions more than originally budgeted to implement, unnecessarily wasting taxpayers’ money and contributing to budget overspends and creating backlogs leading to more contractors being employed than previously was the case.”

Councillor Robert Nemeth plans to propose a motion relating to the toilets

It also said: “The council has so far refused requests to undertake a proper analysis of the effectiveness of its insourcing policies or an audit to determine the extent of the millions of pounds of public funds that have been lost.”

Cllr Nemeth intends to call for a detailed report and put any further insourcing plans on hold until a proper analysis and report had been published.

He said: “The council insourced housing repairs in 2020 under Labour – and then insourced public toilets in 2022 under the Greens.

“Both decisions have proven disastrous. Both policies have cost tens of millions more and services have collapsed.

“In just three years, the insourced housing repairs service has racked up a backlog of 11,000 repairs, hurting council tenants.

“And we all know about the 17 closed public toilets blocks – one half of the city’s total.

“Why on earth would you cancel a public toilet cleaning contract which had five years left to run and under which all public toilets in the city were open?

“This is terrible business sense from the council. If residents want to pay more for a worse service, that’s fair enough. Otherwise, don’t vote for parties that support this insourcing disaster.”

• READ MORE: These are the public toilets that could be closed under council plans to cut costs

Cllr Nemeth said that when the council brought the repairs service in-house, staff embarked on industrial action. And during the coronavirus pandemic, workers carried out emergency repairs only, resulting in a backlog.

Contractors were brought in to deal with the high number of repairs even though a key aim of the changes had been to reduce reliance on the private sector.

Conservative councillor Dawn Barnett criticised the proposed closure of public toilets, citing the effect on families using local parks.

She said: “It’s disgusting closing the toilets in the parks and on the beaches. They expect people to get fit and use the parks and children to play. They need to use the toilets.

“What they’re doing is disgusting, making people suffer for their own mistakes.”

Conservative councillor Dawn Barnett also spoke out about the issue

Labour and Conservative councillors voted down a Green proposal to bring in charges for public toilets at a meeting of the council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee meeting on Tuesday 17 January.

The proposal is due to be discussed at the meeting of the full council on Thursday.

Last summer Green councillor Siriol Hugh-Jones accused the Conservatives of political posturing on public toilets – to mislead the public. She said: “Their attitude, quite simply, stinks.”

The council brought the cleaning and maintenance of toilets in-house in light of concerns about the standard of service by the previous contractor, the Greens said.

Brighton and Hove City Council is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4.30pm on Thursday 2 February. The meeting is scheduled for webcast on the council website.