By Rebecca Maer
“I’ve never lost my temper in public like that before!” Sarah Farrow said as she walked down the steps of the Town Hall.
Senior Liberal Democrat members of Eastbourne Borough Council had just agreed spending cuts of £2.7 million for this year, including the possible closure of most of the town’s public toilets.
These are on top of the £3m already agreed as part of its 2024/25 budget.
Last week’s Cabinet meeting was a heated affair, with a couple of dozen residents jeering at councillors, mostly over the deeply controversial plans for public toilets.
The proposal is to have a ‘community toilet scheme’ in which businesses open their facilities to the public instead. There is a six-week consultation on this and other proposals here.
However, the Eastbourne Hospitality Association confirmed to the Eastbourne Reporter that it did not receive any warning of the consultation over this plan.
Ms Farrow has run four-star Gyves House in St Aubyn’s Road (above), just metres from the seafront, for the last four years.
She was furious and told councillors at the meeting why she opposed the plan. We caught up with her after the meeting to find out her views.
Ms Farrow said: “Business people are horrified. We are the heartbeat of a town like this and we are rooted in hospitality. Every day we pay homage to that hospitality heritage and to see this proposal: it is naïve beyond belief.”
“For my beautiful hotel to be used as a public toilet is beyond ridiculousness. The whole proposal, if the council thought about it, is divisive.
“If you have a small café or restaurant and people demand to use your premises but you don’t have the right facilities, then that’s clearly going to be confrontational. Your staff and the customers already in the cafe will be put under pressure.
“There is also a big issue with licensed premises: you cannot have unaccompanied minors running in, looking for the toilet, because that is not the right way to run a licensed premises.
“When the town swells with numbers with all the wonderful things that go on here, it will not be able to cope. In lockdown, when public toilets had to be closed, there were the most dire consequences: defecation, nappies, sanitary towels littering beaches.
“This is the last thing we need and there are also health implications in that. Homeless people would also not have access to a toilet or washing facilities.
“In a tourist destination, the last thing we want is our own elected members on the council to produce a crisis of human excrement and dirty nappies.”
Sarah farrow
“This is a Pandora’s Box: they don’t really understand the ramifications of what they are proposing. We want to work with the council as businesses – we know how to budget because we do that all the time.
“We could help them with their decisions in a respectful way but what we can’t do is have these decisions thrust on us with the view: ‘Of course, the businesses will take over for us’. That is not a decision they should be making. They should be having a full consultation with us.”
Ms Farrow said hospitality had been a challenge but, post Covid, many businesses are thriving.
“It’s not a case that we’re all moaning minnies. But in a tourist destination, the last thing we want is our own elected members on the council to produce a crisis of human excrement and dirty nappies.”
A spokeswoman for the EHA told the Eastbourne Reporter: “I can confirm the EHA received no prior warning of this consultation but we have been aware for some time of the council’s need to make more cuts to public services.
“We are currently consulting our members on the matter and urging everyone to respond to the proposals via the council website as the closure of public toilets will impact a number of EHA member establishments.”
The Friends of Eastborurne Seafront has launched a petition against the plan here.
Council leaders have warned for some time about the pressures on the council’s finances as a result of its homelessness spending. Housing is a statutory service it must provide.
According to the council, it has been spending £4.5 million annually on temporary accommodation. The annual income from domestic council tax is £9.9 million.
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