Building Regulations: Sanitary Provision

Debate between Lord Greenhalgh and Lord Sterling of Plaistow

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, to respond to that very sensible question, it is not in the gift of central government to control the number of toilets, but what we can do is provide funds to encourage further provision, as we have done with the changing places fund, and provide tax relief, as we did with the Act that was mentioned. Indeed, a lot of other legislation—I could go through a list—places a duty on workplaces to provide accessible toilets. I am happy to write to the noble Baroness if we have those statistics to hand, because it would be useful to see whether this has had an impact.

[Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)]

I have brought up this subject in the past. By the summer we are going to have very large numbers of people coming to this country from abroad, including those with young children, and elderly people coming in their thousands to celebrate the Queen’s upcoming Jubilee, among other things. In practice, and as we have seen in the past, there is a huge shortage of toilets in this country. People will be tired, it will be hot and they will not be allowed to go into restaurants—no restaurant is going to let 50 people through. The provision of toilets is absolutely lacking. The number of people who will be travelling here, we hope, during the next year or so will be huge, and we need vastly more decent toilet facilities in this country.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, there is no doubt that the pandemic has reduced the number of visitors in the last couple of years, as we know from the contraction of our airline industry, but we are looking forward to a deluge of people coming to his great country. Of course, we want them to have a wonderful experience and access to toilets—both accessible and ordinary toilets—and I am sure we will work hard to meet that.