Today I popped along to the talk toilet event at the Coro organised by SLDC. There was a scattering of local councillors, who had been invited to this preview session. It's all about closing down some of Ulverstons' public toilets, as well as others in the district.
I browsed the half dozen display boards which seemed to be saying we now need 21st century toilets, and that to bring all toilets into the modern age was going to be beyond the councils budget. Apparently it cost, on average £405 per week to keep a toilet open. I asked Lawrence Conway, the SLDC rep. how they came to a figure of £405 and he told me that it was an average cost, so why not just say about £400, but Lawrence insisted it was an average figure which came out to £405.
The thing that I found ludicrous was the questionnaire that we were asked to fill in. This ran to about 8 pages and it was seeking my opinion and comments on every public toilet in the SLDC area. Each Toilet was to be rated as used very often through various options to never have used it. How ridiculous, I did have an opinion on Ulverstons quota of public loos but quite honestly I didn't have an opinion on most of the others, although if caught short in Aldingham I may have been grateful that there is one there.
To my mind this was an overkill questionnaire, a vast waste of paper and trees. Why not do it on line, or just have a page devoted to our toilets. On top of this there were hundreds of nicely printed postcards telling me of the event that I was already at.
Of course this had all been organised by some consultancy firm who must have spent goodness knows how much producing all these bits of paper, maybe enough to keep our loos open for a year when rolled out across the county.
In the end it'll probably be recycled into loo paper.
But honestly, who is going to collate all of these questionnaires, all those little tick boxes, and comments, surely it's going to take ages, and then who will cross check, it's going to take a small army. But then I was introduced to Lawrences' side kick from the consultancy, an enthusiastic young man whose name I didn't catch. Seemingly he was going to be doing the collating.
In the end, after talking to Lawrence for a while it turns out that the reason for all of this bringing loos up to date is to comply with the disability laws. Otherwise the council could get sued for not providing facilities for all. And I have to say you can't argue with that, it's the way of the European Union, and the march of civilisation.
I don't think we'll get the answers we want from this public consultation, and lots of loos will be closed, in fact I'm sure that SLDC already have a plan and this is just a smoke screen. Or maybe I'm just an old cynic, in fact my very first band was called The Cynix, with an x, so maybe nothing changes.
I too have become very cynical about consultations.
ReplyDeleteThere needs to be a statement at the beginning from the council as to precisely what can actually be achieved. How much money is available to implement peoples wishes.
An open consultation which invites views of what you want and then turns round and reports:
"That was very interesting, we really appreciate the time you took going along with our rigmarole , But sadly we can't implement any of it.
"In fact we knew beforehand that we were going to pay out £24,000 in order to help the public feel as though they are being listened to but all we want to do is save the £400,000 we spend on this service by cutting it completely.
"Now if anyone else would like to come along and provide a better service, we would be delighted and we will show them all we found out, but beyond that all we can offer are broad smiles (one could say 'grins')."
Empty consultations like the one Highways ran last year lead to anger and a refusal to waste time getting involved with politics.
Some day soon, the anger will boil over uncontrollably and our society will begin to disintegrate.
Politicians need to take on the role of the glue that holds us together, co-coordinating the energy we have so that we feel some sense of achievement in the part we play working together with others in our communities.