Homeless people face being locked out of public toilets due to card-only payments

Homeless people face being locked out of public toilets due to a rising trend for card-only payments to pay for them, a new study has warned.

Public toilets have disappeared from Britain’s streets in recent years, slashed from 6,087 facilities to 3,990 in the last decade with the conveniences a leading victim of austerity and council cuts.

Research from Victorian Plumbing found public toilets are on track to go extinct by 2105 at the current rate of closures.

• Austerity is more expensive than investment in public services. It’s basic maths
• Key public services are in bad shape across the board, say most Brits – with NHS faring the worst

The firm warned some local authorities have switched to card-only payments to cover the maintenance of public conveniences – and that risks leaving people experiencing homelessness locked out.

Alex Woods, bathroom expert and spokesperson for Victorian Plumbing, said: “The lack of public toilets significantly affects the most vulnerable people in our society who are often in need of these facilities the most. The rapid decline of public toilets can have a huge impact on people’s lives and the addition of card-only payments to access them only makes it more difficult.

“As part of our research into the decline of public toilets in the UK, Victorian Plumbing ran a petition to require local authorities to provide public toilets. The petition gained over 2,900 signatures.

“This petition was started in the hope that the government would consider the importance of public toilets for a healthy and inclusive society. We believe the UK government should make it a legal requirement for local authorities to provide and maintain suitable, safe, clean and appropriately located public toilets.”

Victorian Plumbing’s analysis found public toilets are on track to disappear from Newcastle-upon-Tyne by 2028 with Birmingham, Plymouth and Manchester set to follow within the next 20 years.

Toilets in Edinburgh and Glasgow are slated to vanish by 2077 with northern English cities Preston, Salford, Liverpool and Lancaster also set to see public toilets removed from streets over the following four years.

The firm highlighted the situation in Nottingham as a particular area of concern. Research found Nottingham has as few as 37 public toilets with around 8,700 people in the city for every facility.

Nottingham City Council is reportedly set to make its toilets accessible only via card payment with the local authority forecasting it will raise £64,000 from charges at its Greyhound Street public toilets.

Councillor Sam Lux, the executive member for carbon reduction, leisure and culture at Nottingham City Council, said: “Unfortunately, the council has no statutory duty to provide free public toilets and charging for them is the only way in which we can continue to keep them open.”

The fears over homeless people’s ability to access toilets behind a card-payment paywall come as Big Issue is focusing on digital and financial inclusion.

Big Issue Group supported 460 people with accessing banking and budgeting in 2023 and delivered more than 230 hours of digital skills to 196 individuals.

Our Blueprint for Change is calling on the government to boost digital and financial inclusion by outlawing high-interest credit, improving broadband access and  implementing a national financial literacy strategy and a digital inclusion strategy led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.