WATCHET councillors have complained to the district authority over the “incompetent way” the transfer of the Harbour Road toilets has been managed, the town council was told at its meeting on Monday (May 8).

The complaint was made by the town council’s toilet working group, which has been cleaning and repairing the Harbour Road toilets they took over from West Somerset Council

In a letter of protest to the district council’s scrutiny committee, the working group said: “We believe that you have not adequately planned or resourced to implement the decision to transfer toilets and consequently failed in your duty of care.

“We have undertaken some urgent repairs, with items waiting to be completed. We recommend

that the scrutiny committee assess these issues to learn how to rectify them and prevent them recurring in future as the response to our letter of complaint still fails to address the issues.”

Working group chairman Cllr John Irven said in a report that a rota of councillors had cleaned the toilets over the Easter bank holiday and many defects had been found.

“Both the men’s and women’s Wallgate units were not dispensing soap, and have been faulty for some time. Wallgate confirmed that the maintenance contract with West Somerset Council had been suspended some time ago to save costs, and as a result the units had not been serviced for a considerable period.”

The town council had since arranged a new annual maintenance contract at a cost of £580.

The report added that a further WC in the ladies’ toilet failed, an­d was found to have a long-standing water leakage which consumed five times more water than necessary. The district council disputed this.

“Although it was requested that the internal decoration of both sets of toilets was to be undertaken by West Somerset Council, or alternatively to be included in the bid to the refurbishment fund and subsequent contract, the council declined to cover this themselves as they had no remaining maintenance budget, and furthermore decreed that no such maintenance costs could be included in the refurbishment bids.

“Repainting of the existing toilets was therefore not included as the cost would have put the original contract out of our reach financially.

“The group recommends that we accept an alternative lowest quote and have them properly painted.

“The freehold has still not been transferred, and we are operating with a two-week licence extension” Cllr Irven said.