Freedom of Information Request about the toilet facilities in London

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Hackney Borough Council should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Hackney Borough Council,

I am writing for a formal request of information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA 2000), regarding the toilet facilities in the boroughs of London. Please provide me details of the following questions:

1. How many public toilets are available in your council’s borough?
2. How much did your council spend in maintenance of the public toilets, cleaners etc, during the last financial year 2018/2019?
3. Does your council pay to Transport for London for the toilet services? If yes, how much was this last financial year 2018/2019?
4. How many toilets are out of service in your borough?
5. How many reports for antisocial behaviors have been made during last year, that happened on toilets, and how many toilets have been closed for antisocial behavior or vandalism?

Please give me an accurate answer, in a spreadsheet format, NOT TEXT or PDF, as I need to analyze the data’s.

Your faithfully,

Santino Pani

hackney@infreemation.co.uk,

Dear Santino Pani

We acknowledge receipt of your email to Hackney:

Freedom of Information request - Freedom of Information Request about the
toilet facilities in London

If you have submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), we will aim to
respond within the statutory timescale of 20 working days. If you have
submitted a Subject Access Request your request will be considered and you
will receive our response within the statutory timescale of one calendar
month.

The reference number for your email is FOI-4981.

Should you have any further inquiries concerning this matter, please reply
to this email leaving the subject line unchanged.

Yours sincerely,
Hackney Council

hackney@infreemation.co.uk,

Dear Santino Pani,

Thank you for your request of 1st December 2019.

 

Your request

1. How many public toilets are available in your council’s borough?
2. How much did your council spend in maintenance of the public toilets,
cleaners etc, during the last financial year 2018/2019?
3. Does your council pay to Transport for London for the toilet services?
If yes, how much was this last financial year 2018/2019?
4. How many toilets are out of service in your borough?
5. How many reports for antisocial behaviors have been made during last
year, that happened on toilets, and how many toilets have been closed for
antisocial behavior or vandalism?

 

Council's response

1. How many public toilets are available in your council’s borough? 

On street toilets

Stamford Hill - 2 Disabled (male and female) included in a total of 4 male
and 4 female units and 2 baby changing facilities, total of 8 units. These
are cleaned 3 times daily. 

Ridley Road Market – 1 Disabled unit and baby changing facility, 2 male
urinals and 3 unisex units, total of 6 units. These are clean 4 times
daily.

Mare Street – 1 Disabled and baby changing facility and 4 unisex units,
total 5 units. These are cleaned 3 times daily. 

Hoxton Market, Stanway Street – 1 Disabled and baby changing facility and
4 unisex units, total 5 units. These are cleaned 3 times daily.  

Hackney Town Hall, Wilton Way – 2 unisex units, both have disabled access.
These are cleaned 3 times daily.

JC Decaux toilets

1x unit at Kingsland Waste fully automatic and maintained by JC Decaux 

1x unit at Dalston Passage fully automatic and maintained by JC Decaux

The Mobile Urinal Service

The mobile urinal service is provided at the following locations on Friday
and Saturday nights:

1 Unit at Hoxton Square.

1 Unit in Old Street next to the Fire Station.

Parks and green spaces

There are 8 individual public toilet blocks within 7 of Hackney’s parks
and green spaces.

 

2. How much did your council spend in maintenance of the public toilets,
cleaners etc, during the last financial year 2018/2019?

Toilets are cleaned by staff from the Council’s Parks & Green Spaces
Services as part of their wider duties at least 3 times a day, and more
frequently if the need arises. The Council’s Parks & Green Spaces
Service’s budgets are not set-up to enable the apportionment of a direct
cost for providing toilet maintenance costs, which include cleaning.

For other toilets, the expenditure was £86,141.40

3. Does your council pay to Transport for London for the toilet services?
If yes, how much was this last financial year 2018/2019? 

No
4. How many toilets are out of service in your borough? 

None

5. How many reports for antisocial behaviors have been made during last
year, that happened on toilets, and how many toilets have been closed for
antisocial behavior or vandalism?

Parks and Green spaces had 8 reports (both written and verbal) relating to
ASB that took place on toilets last year. Individual  cubicles / urinals 
may have been closed to facilitate repairs but no toilet block was closed.

No other toilets have had reported or recorded vandalism or ASB

 

Appeals and complaints

If you are dissatisfied with this response and wish to appeal, please
respond to this email to request an Internal Review.

If you are still not satisfied following the Internal Review, you have a
right to appeal to the Information Commissioner.

[1]https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ema...

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

0303 123 1113

Kind regards

Information Management
ICT Services
London Borough of Hackney 

 

References

Visible links
1. https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/ema...

Dear [email address],

Thank you for your response. I appreciate the fact you provided me a list of toilets in your borough, although it was not necessary; However, I am not completely satisfied of the answer on Q.2, as I find strange that the council does not have details of the maintenance costs for those toilets, whilst the data is available for the other toilets, as you provided (thanks for that).
Can I have a copy of the Parks & Green Spaces’ Service Budgets? I tried to search it online, but I could not find it.

Further, I am not completely satisfied on how you responded, as instead of providing me the data in a spreadsheet format (that should had been a XLSX file) you wrote it directly as text, making you spend more time to do that, and for me to retrieve the data and transfer on Excel, where I could analyse the data, and compare it with the ones of other councils.

Yours sincerely,

Santino Pani