PUBLIC toilets could close in three Denbighshire towns as the council looks to cut costs.
Facilities in St Asaph, Rhuddlan and Dyserth are set to be lost unless community councils step in and adopt the services.
It comes as Denbighshire Council continues to cut its budget for toilets by tens of thousands of pounds.
At a communities scrutiny committee meeting this week at Denbighshire Council’s Ruthin County Hall HQ, the council outlined plans to shut the toilets as part of a review of public conveniences.
But the “draft local toilet strategy and savings proposal” also includes upgrading public conveniences in Rhyl, Prestatyn, Denbigh, Ruthin, Llangollen and Corwen, where “cashless payment” systems will be used to charge customers to pay for “a mobile cleaning team”.
The upgrade follows an application to the Welsh Government’s “Brilliant Basics” fund, with a decision expected in early April 2025.
The plans come after Denbighshire Council completed a needs assessment of its public conveniences.
While the needs assessment highlighted an identified need for public toilets in the six towns’ facilities to be upgraded, the assessment didn’t deem St Asaph, Rhuddlan or Dyserth as needing them.
Whilst toilets aren’t a statutory service, the Welsh Government’s Public Health Act places a duty on councils to publish a “local toilet strategy”, which must include an assessment of the need for toilets, baby changing facilities and changing places facilities for disabled people.
In setting the 2024/25 budget, a review of public conveniences was included as a major savings proposal with £200,000 removed from the budget, reducing the cost of toilets to £70,000.
That decision was largely based on an assumption that at least some public toilets would need to close, unless a way could be found to make the service fit the new budget.
The council is now exploring the option of transferring toilets to “partners”, including city, town and community councils.
The report states: “Given that this is a discretionary service, the council should cease to operate public conveniences in towns where it has been established that there is no identified need i.e., St. Asaph, Rhuddlan, and Dyserth.”
The report also added that “pod facilities” at the end of their life should be closed and decommissioned.
The council now plans to upgrade toilets in Rhyl, Prestatyn, Denbigh, Ruthin, Llangollen and Corwen but with a “cashless payment” system.
The report said: “Public conveniences in towns with an identified need should be upgraded to enable them to accept cashless payment so they can be unstaffed and serviced by a mobile cleaning team.”
Cabinet member with the portfolio for toilets Cllr Barry Mellor introduced the report at the meeting.
He said: “All I really want to add at this stage is that I understand the importance of public toilets.
“I have been working with the service and the corporate director to try and come up with a plan to keep the toilets open where there is a clear need for them.
“I hope that comes through in the report before you today.”
Corporate director Tony Ward added: “Our responsibility, our duty, our statutory duty is to have a strategy for local public conveniences, and we have to do the needs assessment in order to base that strategy on beyond that.
“The provision of public toilets is a discretionary service.
“We have a duty to try to address the need that’s identified in there, but it’s quite a difficult situation because we have to be seen to try and meet the need, but there is no statutory requirement to provide public toilets.
“It is a discretionary service.
“Many local authorities don’t run public toilets anymore.
“They’ve (decided to do) a mixture of closing them and handed them over to other groups like town and community councils.”
Mr Ward then said he was asking for invites to town and community councils to discuss them adopting public toilets again.
He also said there had been not much traction in businesses agreeing to provide toilets for an annual fee.
Cllr Barry Mellor also said he had been kicked out of Rhyl Town Council, of which he is a member, when he’d attempted to discuss the plans.
He said: “Each time I’ve mentioned at Rhyl Town Council, I’ve been told to leave. I spoke to Gary Williams (council officer) about it. I shouldn’t have been told to leave.
“I’ve every right to be there. If it goes to a vote, obviously… but in the past, I’ve been told to leave.”
Chairwoman Cllr Karen Edwards said: “That’s disappointing.”
Denbighshire Council carried out a consultation to inform the final version of the Local Toilet Interim Needs Assessment, which ran from 22 July to 15 September 2024, receiving 1,419 responses.
A new Local Toilet Strategy was then drafted before a second public consultation ended on 12 February 2025.
The council received a further 457 responses online and six emails from members of the public.
Cllr Merfyn Parry questioned if it was responsible to close public toilets in smaller towns that could be damaged economically. “St Asaph is a city, isn’t it? It is an important part of our county, and for there not to be toilets…We’ve got an element of aged people in St Asaph as well,” he said.
“For there not to be toilets and disabled facilities… so I think we should stress it to the town councils that the benefits for them of having them as well.”
Cllr Parry added closing toilets could affect the mental health of elderly people who relied on them to go out.
Cllr Edwards then said the decision could also affect tourist towns like Llangollen.
The scrutiny committee agreed it had considered the local needs assessment, having given feedback, and that councillors had read and understood the report, which was backed and will now be moved forward for debate at a future meeting.
