MORE than £24,000 is to be spent asking residents of South Lakeland if they think the district council should give up responsibility for public toilets.

Bosses at South Lakeland District Council which needs to reduce costs to balance the books, want to rid themselves of the financial burden of operating public toilets across the district.

It costs the authority £790,000 to maintain 44 public toilets for which the authority receives no funding from central Government.

The problem is compounded by a report that shows many of the toilets require upgrades, which would cost SLDC £39 million, a figure officers say it would be unable to raise.

The council is to ask residents their views on five options for the toilets including upgrading the most used toilets, transferring responsibility to parish and town councils, setting up a community help fund, linking with shops and businesses to make their toilets available or for the council to withdraw entirely from running loos.

Coun Brenda Woof, SLDC portfolio holder for environment and sustainability, said: “I’m sure residents and visitors want better toilets, and they don’t particularly care whether it’s our name over the door, as long as they are clean, open and working properly.

"The cost of the consultation reflects the immense size and importance of the project being undertaken to get as many views as we can.”

Richard Greenwood, from Cumbria Tourism, said toilets were part of the visitor experience and who-ever ran them, it was important that they were of a good quality.

He said Cumbria Tourism would like to see more toilets in visitor car parks.

“I think that the industry would prefer a range of good quality toilets irrespective of who they are run by,” he said.