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Oswestry households to pay extra £5 for public toilets
Tuesday 18th January 2011, 7:00PM GMT.
Householders in Oswestry will have to fork out an extra £5.43 this year to keep the town centre’s toilets open. Oswestry Town Council is to take over the running of the toilets on Central car park.
This will cost £30,000. As a result, the cost is to be added to the authority’s portion of the council tax bill – raising it from £56.99 a year for 2010/2011 for an average Band D house to £64.33 this coming year
Without taking on responsibility for the toilets, the council would have only raised its part of the council tax bill to £58.90 a year.
Shropshire Council says it will close public toilets across the county that the smaller councils refuse to take responsibility for.
Last night town councillors warned that although they felt they had no choice but to keep the busy toilets open, they could not keep taking on responsibility for services the unitary authority could not afford.
The council already runs the public toilets in Cae Glas park.
Councillor Martin Bennett said Oswestry still had one of the lowest council tax precepts in Britain thanks to income from the markets and car parks – which pay 78 per cent of the cost of the council’s services.
“There is no guarantee on this income and the discrepancy between precept and income is growing,” he said.
Councillors voted unanimously to take over the toilets and raise the £30,000 through the precept rather than using reserves.
Councillor Bill Benyon said: “A town’s reputation is made by the state of its toilets.”
However, Councillor Betty Gull said: “The townspeople will now be paying for these toilets. Shropshire Council cannot continue to offload services onto us.”
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