LYME REGIS: Council u-turn on toilets

LYME Regis Town Council has made a u-turn on its decision to employ local people to clean its public toilets - last summer labelled among the dirtiest in the country - and has instead agreed to a six-month contract with a professional company.

Councillors decided to employ Glen Cleaning Services after they gave the council a quote of £9,246 for a year. Deputy town clerk Simon Ratcliff described this as a “very competitive figure” in comparison to the £11,180 charged by the council’s previous cleaners UCL, and the cost of employing their own staff, estimated at £25,718.

Glen Cleaning Services was appointed to clean West Dorset District Council’s toilets in Lyme Regis, and recruited the Lyme-based staff from UCL.

UCL then gave the town council notice, saying they would not be able to clean their Marine Parade and Anning Road Playing Field toilets as of April 18th.

The town council agreed to advertise for three local part-time cleaners and received four applications.

However, Mr Ratcliff said: “Whilst they may all be appointable there is clearly a chance that we might have to re-advertise.

Delay

“Even if we could appoint to all three posts, there would be a delay before they could start and we cannot afford not to have the toilets cleaned over Easter and May Day Bank Holiday weekends, especially as this is still in the school holidays and the Fossil Festival is on.”

Councillors discussed a contract with Glen Cleaning Services at last week’s Strategy and Policy Committee meeting.

Councillor David Cozens MBE  asked if they were getting rid of the idea of employing local people, to which committee chairman Councillor Owen Lovell replied:  “Not completely”.

Councillor Daryl Turner expressed concern that they would not have as much control over a professional company as they would over their own employees, which was one of the reasons they had previously decided to advertise for their own cleaners.

“If we need them to be open at 10 o’clock on carnival night, would they be willing to do it?” he asked.

Councillor Barbara Austin asked where the cleaners would have to travel from if there was an emergency.

“If they were local they would be on the spot,” she added.
Mr Ratcliff said the cleaners would only have to come from as far as Bridport or West Bay, as this was as far as their cleaning route went. He added that if the emergency was a blockage, they used separate companies to deal with this.

Councillor Lorna Jenkin complained of former cleaners UCL’s “10 minute rule”.

She said: “No matter what state the toilets were in they could only spend 10 minutes in there.”

Mr Ratcliff said he could make sure that the new contractor’s service was better than that.

In a report he handed out to all councillors, Mr Ratcliff wrote: “In addition to regular concerns over the state of all the public toilets in Lyme Regis, we were most concerned last year with the lack of supervision, management support and cover arrangements provided by UCL. I have, in my discussions with Glen Cleaning, stressed how vital the provision of good quality, clean toilets is to the town’s reputation as a visitor destination.

“This is also clearly something that Glen appreciate, as their quality assurance and cover arrangements demonstrate, I also know that they have budgeted for additional cleaners to be available during the summer peak season if necessary.”

Councillor Stan Williams asked whether they could guarantee that the new contractors would offer a better service.

“We need to know what we’re getting into,” he added.
Councillor Ken Meech joked: “There are only two guarantees in life – one of them is death and the other is taxes!”

He added that the “public purse has to be considered” and that the service could be varied if it wasn’t good enough.

Councillor Peter Williams said: “Until we try them we won’t know how good they are. They will soon find out how much pressure is put on those toilets.”

Councillor Lovell suggested that a structure needed to be put in place to check the standards of cleaning.

“We can’t check them all the time but at least that way we can say they were checked a few days ago.”

He also suggested that the contract be extended to October, to give the council more time to review the service after the summer season.

It was unanimously agreed to recommend to the full council Glen Cleaning Services be employed on a six month contract to cleaning the Marine Parade and Anning Road playing fields toilet. That decision will be put to a special meeting to the full council on April 20th.