Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Randerson and Baroness Pinnock

Committee stage
Monday 13th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I apologise to the Minister. I just thought I would add to the questions now and not interrupt further.

Is this an admission by the Government that the current system of independently elected police and crime commissioners has not been effective? I cannot think of any other reason why the two separate roles should be combined unless it is felt that the separate role of the police and crime commissioner has not been as effective as the Government wished.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

In the interests of making life easier for the noble Baroness, perhaps I could add my question. What assessment have the Government done of the crossover of funding between local authorities and police services for community safety work and partnerships? That is a frequent model. When the noble Baroness says that the police and crime commissioner role has no impact on local authorities, surely, that funding flow is relevant.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Baroness Randerson and Baroness Pinnock

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of an informal campaign group which seeks to improve the standards of public toilets generally. I am pleased to speak in support of the amendments in this group, and I am grateful to the Minister for his response by letter to issues that I, among others, raised at Second Reading. However, I am sure that he will forgive me when I say that I found his arguments unconvincing.

I accept that to include facilities open to the public, but not as separate or distinct buildings, would mean a valuation exercise. In each local authority area this would involve numbers maybe in the dozens, not the hundreds. That really cannot be seen as a costly hurdle. The Minister believes that it would divert resources from the 2023 revaluation. It should simply be part of the revaluation. I also reject the idea that identifying the facilities concerned would be difficult. These are public facilities and public bodies would self-identify. I also recommend to the Minister the Great British Public Toilet Map, available online, and a number of apps which guide you to local public toilets.

As it stands, the Bill is of course sensible, but it is a paltry little measure and will certainly not bring the transformation needed. I am not sure how deeply the Government consulted local government representatives. The local authorities that I am familiar with ceased building stand-alone public conveniences decades ago because problems of anti-social behaviour are so much greater in isolated blocks. Nowadays, new sets of conveniences are mainly incorporated in other public buildings, where issues of safety for users, maintenance and cleanliness are more easily dealt with. Stand-alone blocks obviously still exist but are often old and are too often already closed and shuttered.

I also wish to test the definition of “publicly owned”. The definition is very blurred these days. Facilities can be publicly owned but privately run—for example, in many areas that is the case with leisure centres. My area has publicly available toilets in libraries and shopping centres. The shopping centres are commercial developments and commercially run, but the toilets are discrete units. They are not just toilets in shops; there are separate doors to them, but it is a commercial operation.

We also have public toilets in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff—a large building at the centre of Cardiff tourism in the bay. It houses major musical events and a lot of youth and artistic activities. It runs free concerts and there are shops and cafes. There is free public access to the toilets. The Wales Millennium Centre is run by a trust, but that trust has been funded by major amounts of public money. I know that the noble Lord will say that that is in Wales and that there is a separate set of rules, but I use it as an example. Clearly, it would not qualify for this scheme, but why should it not? It provides the same facilities, with cleaning and maintenance, and the public are allowed to enter for a large number of hours each day of the week.

It is really not difficult to ascertain whether toilets are genuinely publicly available or available for a reasonable amount of time each day. The Minister told us that the Government are adopting the community toilet scheme, and similar types of rules can apply for rate relief.

My concern is not just that the Government’s scheme is not generous enough; it is also that it is not even-handed. Public toilets in buildings still have to be maintained and cleaned, so why should an accident of situation define whether this relief is granted? It could even discourage major new developments from incorporating what would be genuinely public toilets.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I draw the Committee’s attention to my interests as listed in the register: as a member of Kirklees Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Greaves and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, to which I have added my name, challenge the scope of the Bill in its restriction to public toilets that are stand-alone and not part of a larger public building, such as a library or community centre. I thank the Minister for the opportunity to discuss these amendments and for the letter that he sent explaining the reasons for confining the scope of the Bill to stand-alone public toilets. However, we have to remember that one consequence of the long period of cuts to local government funding has been that many public toilets have been closed permanently. In my local authority, which serves nearly half a million people, there are now no stand-alone public toilets. The Bill is welcome but it is very much like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

These amendments are intended to encourage the Government to appreciate the wider need to increase the availability of public toilets. There is already pressure for some public toilets in public buildings to be closed because of the costs associated with keeping them open, as they are not part of the focused purpose of the building. For example, a public library is having to use scarce funds to keep the public toilets in its building open when there is barely sufficient funding to staff the building. That is the dilemma facing local authorities, certainly in the northern urban areas that I know well.

My noble friend Lord Greaves’s points are well made. Local people regard public toilets within a public building as being the same as stand-alone public toilets. The challenge is explained in the letter that I referred to earlier—the volume of work it would impose on the valuation office—but my noble friend Lord Greaves’s amendment seeks to find a way round this for public toilets that have separate access. I hope that the Minister is able to respond positively to that amendment.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, is an expert on these matters. He has said that valuation for rating is not just about facts and figures. One example that he provided was the relief given to charities. The Government would do well to take heed of the arguments that the noble and learned Lord made, and that view has been well supported by my noble friend Lady Randerson. As well as making those arguments and supporting my noble friend Lord Greaves’s view, she argued that improved public toilets are more secure and can be more easily kept clean if they are within a public building, rather than being stand-alone.

The Government have a responsibility to ensure adequate availability of publicly funded public toilets. It is a responsibility that has been accepted since the days of the great Victorian public heath reformers. The Bill demonstrates that the Government continue to accept that they have that responsibility. It is not sufficient, in fulfilling this obligation, to make those public toilets that have survived the cull zero rated. The Government must provide the means for local government to increase availability to meet local need. That is what these amendments seek to do and I wholeheartedly support them.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Baroness Randerson and Baroness Pinnock

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD) [V]]

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]