Toilets, or rather the risk of Covid-19 being transmitted in toilets, appear to be a major factor why the Scottish Government’s advice to people has been to stay local (see here):
“Because of the high chance of the virus living on hard surfaces, we don’t want people using public toilets or going into someone’s home to use their toilet, so staying local avoids that problem.”
The continued closure of public toilets, however, is having predictable consequences as people spend longer periods outdoors for recreation and have nowhere to go (see here). The problems that are being created affect urban areas as well as the countryside. Whether people go out for a physically distanced picnic or a long bike ride, eventually they will need to go to the toilet. The Scottish Government advice seems based on the assumption that people will turn and head for home long before that point. That is unrealistic and discriminates against people who need to go to the toilet often (see here).. Having praised Glasgow City Council for having kept the last remaining toilets in Pollok Park open for the first couple of months of the corona crisis (see here), at the weekend I found they too had been locked. This post takes a look at what needs to be done.
The risks of viral transmission in toilets
The risks are determined partly by levels of Covid-19 in the population and observance of social isolation by people who have symptoms. With the number of people infected now low and most people with symptoms isolating, the chances of asymptomatic virus carriers infecting any particular toilet is probably also low. The busier the toilet, the higher the risks of an infected person having visited.
Early research, however, clearly showed that Covid-19 lingers in toilets which are not cleaned (see here). Regular cleaning with disinfectants therefore clearly reduces the risks of large-scale transmission considerably. The question is how to mitigate the risks between cleans.
The answers to that question lie in a mix of reducing the contact people have with hard surfaces and good hygiene. There will be similar considerations for any toilet used by a number of people who are not in the same household, whether this is in a workplace like a hospital or school, or a public convenience. It is perfectly possible for a man to use a urinal and then wash his hands under an automated tap and soap dispenser without touching any surfaces at all. For interesting coverage of some of the way “washrooms” are being re-designed in one part of the USA to reduce risks see here.
Thankfully, Greenspace Scotland last week circulated some excellent advice about safe management of toilets in the countryside from the Visitor Safety Management Group (see here):
There are some people, of course, who will be concerned about every possible risk, however small. With care, though, it should be possible for most people to use public toilets with very little risk so long as they wash their hands properly (and potentially use hand sanitiser too if touching a tap is unavoidable).
The main problems our public authorities face – and I would not underestimate these – is how to pay for modification to toilet facilities that would help reduce risks (like hands free soap dispensers), how to pay for the additional cleaning and what management measures might be needed to maintain physical distancing in larger facilities.
Availability of toilet facilities v demand
Parkswatch has long campaigned, with only limited success it has to be said, for more toilet facilities in our National Parks. The problem of human waste is one that was used to justify the introduction of the camping byelaws in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. The human waste problem has still not been solved, indeed in some ways has got worse, despite the obvious solution (see here): temporary mobile toilets are used in the summer months across National Parks in England and Wales. Recently, Mary Jack drew attention to how the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority seem to be treating their toilet upgrade programme as a source of future income rather than as a service to the public (see here). Meantime, many popular areas, including beauty spots, still lack any toilet facilities with public authorities shying away from tackling the issues due to the costs. The LLTNPA ditched its (excellent) plans to increase toilet provision four years ago (see here).
These problems are not unique to National Parks. They affect rural areas across Scotland and have received significant publicity in areas like Skye and the North Coast 500.
With holidays abroad out of the question or at best made difficult, it is now predictable that the number of people visiting the countryside in Scotland is likely to increase significantly as lockdown is relaxed. In the medium term, as long as accommodation remains shut down, people will be forced into day visits. This will increase the pressure further in the areas reasonably accessible from towns. Crudely, in our National Parks, one might anticipate visitor influxes along the following lines: Deeside from Aberdeen; Speyside from Inverness and Perth; the Angus Glens from Dundee; Loch Lomond and the Trossachs from the Glasgow conurbation; the Trossachs from Edinburgh, Stirling and the central belt. An educated guess is that existing toilet facilities are likely to face higher demand than ever before – raising the chances of accidental Covid transmission – while the problem of human waste in areas without facilities will reach record levels.
The choice available to government is either to avoid the issues, as they have done in Phase 1 of the release of lockdown, and keep facilities closed or provide solutions.
The obvious solution to the lack of toilets issue remains the one that parkswatch has long advocated, temporary mobile toilets. An excellent article in the Herald on Sunday ten days ago (see here) highlighted how existing mobile toilet businesses are now idle, due to the cancellation of outdoor events. There is therefore a resource waiting and ready to be used. Interestingly, the featured business was based in Gartocharn, in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. This happens to be the village where the Chief Executive of the LLTNPA, Gordon Watson, lives. The solutions to one of the most likely problems to be associated with relaxing the lockdown lie right under his nose!
It’s well past time that our National Parks started to show a lead on this. All that the LLTNPA would need to sort out with the contractor is what additional cleaning they required, informed if necessary by advice from public health, and then hey presto…ready to go!
What needs to happen
In just over two weeks the school holidays start and it is quite predictable that families with children, no longer home schooling, are then likely to flock to the countryside (unless the rain intervenes). By that date, therefore, our public authorities need to have prepared for the influx, re-opened all existing car parks and toilets, put in place arrangements to manage these and re-started litter collections.
But our public authorities also need to have made arrangements by then for additional provision. In this post I have suggested that mobile toilets have a key role in meeting increased public demand.
The immediate challenge is cost and spare resources, which few of our public authorities have. We need, therefore, the Scottish Government to recognise the opportunity and the challenge and to start taking a proactive lead on opening up the countryside. Instead of saying no, the Scottish Government should be enabling and empowering public authorities to assist visitors to enjoy the countryside as never before. People in Scotland deserve safe days out while on holiday and the Scottish Government needs to pay for additional infrastructure to help make that happen. Until it does that, it is hard to see the rest of rural tourism, which is on its knees, being able to re-start.
Since this started whenever I go out I take hand sanitiser with me and use it before and after touching anything, as surface transmission seems to be a likely vector.
If public toilets were to be available I would carry some sort of spray sanitiser.
I believe that hand held battery operated UV light sanitisers are available and it would be useful if there was information from official sources to tell us if these are effective, but on current form I don’t expect to see any such thing.
Had a quick look and apparently most of these UV things don’t work, the ones that do would be potentially hazardous so it looks like a non starter.
Interesting post, the mobile toilets could really help with the solution. Have just watched an article on Borders News showing rubbish left by visitors near Peebles and in the Lake District. It seems to be the case that these ‘new’ visitors are younger, missing their festivals and trying to recreate some sort of festival in the countryside with everything left behind. Toilets and bins will be crucial as people come back to the countryside.
Sadly, in relation to the last sentence in the post on rural tourism being on its knees the Mountain Cafe in Aviemore will not be re-opening due to the financial pressures from Covid and lockdown. I’m gutted, but many happy memories of great meals and cakes after backpacking in the Cairngorms.
Strange the mountain cafe not reopening, always so busy, and would imagine they would be in a good position to reopen once restrictions ease. but shows the madness of the five mile guidelines, cafes such as the mountain cafe should be open for take away by now, and should also be thriving with passing trade, but if most people from areas such as Inverness have been put off from traveling to Aviemore due to uncessary guidelines, might be case there is still not enough local demand for such business to reopen. As I have said previously, with such low numbers of positive cases in Scotland just now, it really is time to start trying to get the country and the rural economy back up in running, I have heard the government is looking tentatively at 15th of July as date to restart rural tourism, but I can’t see how it’s sensible to go from one day advising against travel more than five miles to next day saying people can go and travel as far as you like and stay in a hotel, surely a phased approach would be better, come 15th of July I imagine there still will be hostility towards visitors in rural communities. The whole madness of the situation just now is that we could soon move to phase two where people in rural communities can meet friends and families indoors In a higher risk environment, but people will still be advised not to travel more than five miles for outdoors exercise.
I have largely currently complied with guidelines since the start of lockdown, mainly because I chose not to own a car or drive, but tomorrow my girlfriend is going to drive us out to aberfoyle from Glasgow, I have some trepidation about this, fear of upsetting the local community and any hostility that might come our way, we are planning a circular route off road cycle to callander and back, would very much like to support local cafes/bakery’s etc for takeaway during trip, but level of apprehension from just making a simple day trip is unreal, and something has definitely went wrong in this country that it has come to this, maybe I am over reacting but I am sure many others feel the same just now.
Hi Daryl, I think there are two possible explanations of mountain cafe closing. First is the business was forced to go bust. Neither UK nor Scottish Govt has suspended debt or rent payments so if the cafe was obliged to pay rent under its lease or owed money to the bank once the small business grant was spent it will have gone bust. Second, the people running it saw a more attractive economic proposition for themselves and thought, stuff the hassle, we will do something else. In terms of the Highlands, very few businesses have the second option while money have obligations under leases and owe money to banks. The crucial issue for these businesses is that the Scottish Government accepts its quite safe for people to travel by car for outdoor recreation for the day again. The problem, I think, is the needless fear of outdoor recreation spreading virus around the countryside – basically the research evidence says it doesn’t – gets in the way of that. If people were told it was safe to travel by car, takeaways should be able to open safely in rural settlements just as it towns as long as the standard precautions that have been taken in towns are applied (all built on maintaining physical distancing) and that would start getting some money back in rural tourism businesses. They cannot wait another five weeks.
Glasgow City Council shut down public toilets years ago one of the last public toilets in the center of the city,St Vincent Street. This toilet was badly needed for the public and turisom. Then and at the time Glasgow City Council used the slogan Glasgow City of culture. Scotland is backward in turisom perhaps that’s why we are being locked in our house
I like your comment “It’s well past time that our National Parks started to show a lead on this” – you could probably quite accurately change this to “It’s well past time that our National Parks started to show a lead on anything”. Whilst large enterprises are busy planning to “bottle” the changed perceptions of their workforces, and advance transformation of how their people work, Scot Gov is still to get going with its “Logan” initiative – and no one seems to be considering how to capture changing perceptions of our National Parks in any positive way. Certainly not LLTNPA.
Latest Scottish government data today suggest anywhere from 1 in 1200 people (worst case) to 1 in 4000 (best case) people are currently infected in Scotland, with medium estimate suggesting that 1 in 2000 people are currently infected. It will be interesting to see the ONS weekly report for England published tomorrow as likely to show a dramatic decrease in infections over past week in England which evidently must also be happening in Scotland right now. How low do you allow infection levels to get before you start gradually easing restrictions? With outdoor excerise being extremely safe, I think we are doing combined uncessary damage to peoples health and wellbeing and to the rural economy. The next review of restrictions is a week today, and surely then will be time to acknowledge that cases are lowering way faster than previously expected, allow cafes and restaurants to open with outdoor seating, open public toilets and ease travel guidelines. Just now it seems we are doing more harm than good and surely the benefits of easing restrictions sensibly far outweigh the potential cost.
In Aberfoyle today, there was one cafe doing takeaways only, and the butcher was open and seemed busy for takeaway hot food. plus the bike shop open for hire, but the town on whole was extremely quite, with the large car park in town maybe 1/10 full. I spent 2 and half hours out on bike in the forest trails and came across two walkers in this time and spotted about 4 road cyclist in total going over dukes pass. Seems such a waste, so much space, and opportunities, but all the forestry commission car parks are still closed, the isolation and solitude was great, but shame to see just two other people enjoy the forest. On the drive back we noticed the parking for dumgoyne was busiest we have ever seen it, parking all down the road side, maybe in past most cars would park at the distillery, so the two normal lay bys were not enough, didn’t seem a problem as most cars found safe space on road side verge, but does highlight the problem, maybe with current guidelines most people felt dumgoyne was as far as they could travel, especially with the queen’s view car park for the whangie still closed according to striling council website.
I am glad the owners of the mountain cafe had found other opportunities, as was a favourite place of ours with many happy memories, but worry for other businesses we love such as the pine Marten bar cafe in Glenmore, hopefully they are doing ok.
Yes let’s hope the Pine Marten bar is OK, another favourite of mine. Another great business based on the passion, friendliness and enthusiasm of those running it. It’s just frustrating to see small businesses struggle when you look up the mountain and see what’s going on at Cairngorm.
And as an aside, the Pine Marten illustrates perfectly how business can thrive off casual visitors – in this case right next to a very popular caravan and motorhome site – if you provide facilities for them to stop instead of (literally) barriers.