JANE Dodds wants local councils to be given more money to help keep public toilets open.

The Mid and West Wales MS who is also the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems asked at the Senedd about the support available to councils.

She said communities across Wales are having to assume responsibility for operating and maintaining public toilets.

Ms Dodds said: “Local authorities try their best to provide limited funding, but they are severely constrained by ever-tightening budgets.

“The lack of public toilets and the unavailability of them being open at particular hours means that this affects not only our own residents but visitors as well.

“Public toilets are central pieces of infrastructure, particularly for older people.”

Ms Dodds asked Finance Secretary, Rebecca Evans, what she can do to help community groups and local councils operate and maintain these “essential public facilities”.

Ms Evans said local authorities' average funding increase for this year is 3.3 per cent, and each of them will need to balance service delivery against available funding.

She said: “Despite our efforts to give authorities the best settlement possible, they are having to make difficult decisions.”

Last month a council survey rated almost 90 per cent of public toilets in Monmouthshire as “good or excellent” .. 

Inspections were made of 16 public toilet blocks, with the lowest mark awarded for their condition being “fair”. 

Of the blocks inspected, eight of them are owned by Monmouthshire County Council with a further eight owned by local town and community councils, which have increasingly taken over responsibility for public toilets from the unitary authority since 2010.

While two toilet blocks are currently closed, in those open there are 12 toilet blocks with disabled toilets. 

The council’s environmental health department visited the toilets in September 2023 and 14 were judged good or excellent - 88 per cent of the total. Only two were judged ‘fair’.

In 2022, when the the survey was last conducted, 81 per cent of county public toilets were rated either good or excellent.