I READ with interest the response on the closure of the Chippenham town centre toilets from Coun Desna Allen, currently the Lib Dem town council leader.

It takes quite some political doublethink to somehow suggest that closing these toilets is my responsibility when I have campaigned with both Wiltshire Council and the town council to keep them open. And exposed the ‘pass the parcel’ manoeuvres between the two councils which have led to this shameful outcome. Let’s be clear – I will continue to campaign to reopen the Bath Road toilet in my ward.

This is, of course, about costs as well as the benefits that public toilets bring.

To put these costs into context, Chippenham Town Council has probably the largest budget of any town council in Wiltshire. Figures on its website show that it spent a quarter of a million pounds in the last month alone.

It has just spent £800,000 refurbishing the Neeld Hall and the front entrance to the town council offices. As Coun Allen well knows, the town council is very shortly going to benefit from tens, probably hundreds of thousands of pounds of income from the Community Infrastructure Levy on the new houses being built around the town, not to mention the supermarket and hotel on Langley Park.

Yet it apparently cannot find the very much smaller amounts that should be needed to keep two public toilets open. By contrast much smaller and less well-off councils in Calne, Devizes and Marlborough recognised their civic duty and kept their toilets open.

Part of the answer may lie in the fact that the town council is going to spend an astonishing £25,000 a year in maintaining the one toilet in the park. This is almost three times the amount estimated by Wiltshire Council.

Put another way, about the same amount as Wiltshire Council spent on all three Chippenham public toilets. How can this be justified? Is this the price Chippenham taxpayers have to pay for delegating services down to the town and parish level? If so, isn’t the whole idea just plain wrong?

One way or another, there are questions to be answered, and decisions to be reviewed.

The lack of public toilets in the town centre ignores a basic human requirement, encourages unhygienic practices, discriminates against bus users, against the elderly, and against people with continence problems, reduces independence, discourages tourists and affects the local economy. It is time to get the costs under control and reopen the toilets.

CHRIS CASWILL, Independent Wiltshire councillor, Chippenham Monkton ward