City council set to begin reopening public toilets

REOPENING public toilets and protecting cultural grants both feature in major changes to Bristol City Council's budget for the next financial year.

- ALEX SEABROOK

The public toilets on East Street in Bristol

Next month councillors are due to approve the budget setting out how hundreds of millions of pounds will be spent on local services from April.

Six changes to the planned budget have just been unveiled. The council will “invest in the work needed to put us on the path towards reopening public toilets”

Eight years ago more than a dozen public toilet blocks closed in Bristol, an unpopular move followed by complaints of public urination.

Few details are available at this stage of how many toilets would be reopened, but £270,000 is planned in the budget.

Another major change is scrapping proposed cuts to the cultural investment programme. The cuts sparked protests and an angry open letter about their impact.

The cultural investment programme gives out roughly £635,000 a year in grants to all sorts of organisations across Bristol, and the cuts would have seen these slashed.