Councillors angry over date for toilets closure

Kirklees Council’s cabinet officially closed 11 sets of toilets, including the ones in Mirfield, at a meeting last December.

But people have still been able to use the loos in Station Road because town councillor Andrew White has been unlocking them each morning and tidying and locking them back up each night since September.

Kirklees said it would not sell the toilets it had closed until December this year, to give local communities the chance to come up with long term plans to keep them open.

It was understood that the toilets in Mirfield would be able to stay open until the end of the year because the town had until then to come up with a plan and Coun White, rather than Kirklees, was looking after them anyway.

But this week Mirfield Town Council discovered that the toilets will be shut on March 31.

The Mayor of Mirfield, Coun David Pinder, said: “The town council deplores the fact that Kirklees Council did not see fit to inform the town council of its change of intention and presumably had no intention of doing so.”

A council spokeswoman said that although towns were told they had until December to come up with plans to keep their toilets open, that did not mean the toilets would be kept open in the meantime.

She said: “The council would be happy to discuss terms with any organisation wanting to take on responsibility for the toilets. However, this will include the upkeep and cost of running the building.”