So Lisa Ackerley thinks that surviving without public toilets is “a matter of planning” (Public inconvenience: how lockdown caused a loo crisis, 9 June) . I can only assume that she doesn’t have to drive 20 minutes to get to her nearest supermarket (whose loos are closed), queue for 30 minutes to get in, spend another 30 minutes shopping, and then realise it is another 20 minutes’ drive home to the loo. For anyone with a normal liquid intake, and in particular people over 60, that is just too long.
In 2018, Joe Oldman, Age UK’s policy manager for housing and transport, told the Guardian: “Accessible public transport, level pavements, places to sit ... and public toilets are all vital components to encouraging older people to stay engaged with their local community.”
The World Health Organization is already trying to condemn over-60s to house arrest simply because of their age; taking away public toilets will help turn that incarceration into a life sentence. As a society, is that really the future we want for older people?
Caroline Toomey
Bratton, Wiltshire
• Perhaps if more women in government were involved in dealing with Covid-19 we would see we would see the reopening of public toilets prioritised.
This is a major public health issue as more places reopen. It is all very well for men to urinate in hedges, but there are many people who cannot venture far from their homes, or for long, until this is sorted out. Some sport may have returned outdoors, but those without cast-iron bladders are excluded. Toilets must be open in schools – what can we learn from their management?
Maggie Johnston
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• To describe not having access to clean public toilets as an “inconvenience” is a clever play on words, but it does not fully represent the disabling effect of the withdrawal of such facilities for those with Crohn’s disease, not to mention the active elderly.
At least when councils closed public toilets before the pandemic in order to save money there was the option of using toilets provided by pubs, shops and cafes. A whole section of society is being prevented from enjoying the new freedom to wander responsibly that the rest of us have been granted as lockdown eases.
Susan Read
Belper, Derbyshire
