DESPITE a surprise three-year grant of £18,000 from Old Cleeve Parish Council, the community-run Blue Anchor toilets still need users to voluntarily pay at least 35p each to ensure the facility’s long term survival.

The charity which has run the toilets since 2017 confirmed this week that it had accepted a three-year funding agreement from the parish council to provide £6,000 a year, with an annual review linked to inflation.

The unexpected decision followed six months of negotiation after the council had previously decided to cut all future grants to charities and organisations to a maximum of £2,000 a year each.

Announcing the turnaround, council chairman Cllr Judith Stabb said: “We believe this will provide certainty of funding for the Blue Anchor toilets and is fair to council taxpayers.

“As a community we should be grateful to the small band of volunteers who work to maintain the toilets in such excellent condition and we hope that all users will make a voluntary contribution to their upkeep.”

At the November meeting of the council Cllr Stabb had warned: "We have to absorb costs for so many applicants and treat everybody fairly.

“Blue Anchor Toilets CIC will have to find alternative methods of future funding."

Cllr Phil Gannon told the meeting it was essential the toilets stayed open.

He reminded members that if the community toilets closed, the facility would go back to the council to run.

Blue Anchor Toilets CIC director Geoffrey Williams said: “We are delighted with the council’s offer, which came totally out of the blue.

“It gives us a firm platform to go forward for the next three years and we will review the situation then.”

Mr Williams said the cost of running the toilets was about £17,000 a year.

He said: “The £6,000 from Old Cleeve council and £2,000 a year from Carhampton council still leaves us with about £10,000 to fund ourselves.

“About £4,000 comes from user donations.

“With the numbers we get, the cost to us per person is roughly 35 pence.

“We average at least 100 people a day - considerably more during the summer - which totals 35,000 to 40,000 a year.

“If everybody using the toilets paid 35 pence that would bring in £14,000 and we would not have any problems.

“We need more money.

“We have been told that we should install locks on the doors, but that would cost at least £10,000 and would not be cost effective, nor would a card machine system.

“All we want is for people to be fair and pay for the service that everybody agrees is vital to Blue Anchor.

“We know that many toilet users do not pay anything.

“We are just asking people to pay for what they use, and with grants and other fund-raising we hope we can keep going.

“We are very pleased with the extra money, but there could still be hard times ahead if people do not pay something toward the invaluable services we are voluntarily providing.”