ROW OVER NEW ESPLANADE TOILETS ERUPTS TO THE DETRIMENT OF LOCALS

Public toilets at the newly refurbished Esplanade train station in Ryde are yet to open – and may stay closed for some time – as a row has broken out about who will look after them. Residents in Ryde will no doubt say that they saw the situation coming after the loos at Western Gardens were knocked down at the start of the £10million Ryde Interchange project last year. Since then, temporary loos have been in place. The initial toilet block set up on the green at Western Gardens had to be removed due to constant vandalism. More recently portaloos have been in situ at the bus station – a somewhat downmarket look for the redeveloped public realm. When news broke that the toilets were to be demolished there were reassurances that they would be replaced — by refurbishing old toilets inside Ryde Esplanade train station. But more than a year on and there are still no permanent toilets available. It has now emerged that both South Western Railway (SWR) and the Isle of Wight Council (IWC) say they won’t maintain the new loos at Ryde Esplanade train station, with Ryde Town Council (RTC) saying it has been left to do it. Ryde Town Council are moaning that they have been left to foot the bill, but they previously looked after the Western Gardens toilet block which was owned by the local authority but leased to RTC.

Ryde Town Council has claimed that South Western Railway told the council it feels it is ‘fulfilling its obligation’ to the public by only opening 1 disabled toilet for those with a radar key. Councillor Phil Jordan, who represents the town on the town council but is also the leader of the Isle of Wight Council, said at a recent meeting that the train company has ‘pushed [RTC] into a corner’ in that if the town council did not maintain the toilets, SWR would not open them. South Western Railway has declined to comment but has said it was the Isle of Wight Council who agreed to fund and deliver bringing the redundant toilets back into use, as part of the wider interchange project, and it was not the intention of SWR to install them otherwise. The Council has now also said it never intended to manage the toilets but it intended to ensure public toilet facilities in the area were not lost.

A spokesperson for the Isle of Wight Council has said Ryde Town Council was included in discussions at every stage and while it “did not have a definitive answer to the operation/management [of the toilets] from the outset, the fallback position was always no different than previously agreed for Western Gardens”. The town council, however, has said it was told SWR would be maintaining the facilities but was approached during the Summer to take on the cleaning. It ‘reluctantly’ agreed to do so, it said, and at no charge to the train company, but was later given a lease to fully maintain the toilets and part of the station, which would cost ‘a lot of money’. Ryde Town Council has said it is keen to see the toilets open as soon as possible but doesn’t want any unnecessary financial risk for the authority or local taxpayers, despite previously budgeted for the maintenance of the former toilets at Western Gardens. Negotiations around the lease continue and the outcome will be reported back to a future Town Council meeting.