Belfast toilet trouble: Spending a penny to cost £100k in repairs, as every city automatic 'superloo' out of order
Public toilets across Belfast are in such a bad state the city council has to splash out almost £100,000 to enable people to use them for a year.
Municipal ‘pay as you go’ conveniences across the city have been operating at a “below the desired standard” level of service, an official report reveals, hit by vandals while their age means it’s increasingly difficult to find replacement parts.
A contract to look after them expired at the end of summer and wasn’t extended, the report adds, while problems finding engineers who can fix and maintain them means many council-run lavatories are far from flushed with success – forced to shut for extended periods of time over the course of the last year.
The city authority is now sorting out a replacement contract with a new maintenance firm lasting 12 months, which it’s stated will cost £98,000.
Charging 20p a pee, the automated units clean themselves after use and are found in locations all across Belfast. They’re normally open for more than 15 hours every day, though out of order signs now redirect the public to the council’s standard toilets that operate between 9am and 5.30pm and in some cases stay locked up on Sundays.
Initially dubbed ‘superloos’, the first versions of the facilities were installed in the city in 1988, but were replaced with the current models in the early years of this century.
Most of the conveniences now in use are more than 20 years old, however, which the council says puts them past the end of their operational lifecycle; in turn, their age has made it increasingly difficult to source replacement parts.
State officials: “This, combined with severe vandalism, damaged components and changes in contractor personnel, particularly the loss of experienced local qualified engineers, has resulted in the units being closed for extended periods of time over the course of the last year.”
Two weeks ago a council committee voted to hire a third-party company to carry out the £98,000 contract.
At the time, state documents, all seven of Belfast’s automated ‘pay as you go’ public toilets were out of action, but the new firm was “confident” it could get at least five of them up and running again.
Details of the situation emerged after politicians kicked up a stink about the state of automated toilets in east Belfast beauty spot Victoria Park.
Built 120 years ago, the park is an oasis of nature and wildlife in the middle of otherwise heavily built up and industrialised areas.
Offering two looping pathways around a lake as well as playing fields, it’s border by the River Conn, which forms a barrier between the park and Belfast City Airport on one side and industrial dockland on the other, including the Harland and Wolff plant.
Although separated from a residential area by the Sydenham Bypass dual carriageway, the park exploded in popularity during and after Covid, not least as the Connswater Greenway links it to the city’s CS Lewis Square – offering an easy way to travel to the oasis on foot from the Newtownards Road area.
Reports state that a city-wide review of council assets will include public toilets it owns in parks, and that process could result in facilities in the east Belfast beauty spot being upgraded.