THE Tory opposition group on Scottish Borders Council has failed in a bid to block the introduction of a 30p entry charge at 27 public conveniences, including three in Peebles and one in Innerleithen.

At yesterday’s full council meeting, Councillor George Turnbull (Con, Hawick and Hermitage) demanded that the council’s ruling administration should reverse last week’s decision by SBC’s executive to phase in the charges over the next financial year.

“We believe imposing this is discriminatory, unfair and plainly wrong,” he stated.

But his motion was defeated by 19 votes to 11.

After an initial capital outlay of £200,000 to install automated entry machines at the selected facilities, the regime is expected to achieve full year savings of £211,000 for a council which currently spends £323,000 a year maintaining 41 public toilets.

Savings of £141,000 are predicted in 2017/18 and were included in the administration’s revenue budget presented to yesterday’s meeting.

That spending programme had been adjusted to take account of an extra £2.88m in the annual support grant to SBC from the Scottish Government which was announced on Friday.

Mr Turnbull told us: “My group believed the projected savings are over-optimistic given the likelihood there will be public resistance to the charges and that the machines are likely to be a magnet for theft and vandalism.

“There is no suggestion in this proposal that the quality of the facilities will be improved and we believe charging the public for the privilege of using them is counterproductive when we are desperately trying to attract more visitors to the region to help regenerate our towns.

“We wanted to use some of the £2.88m windfall to retain free access to all the council’s 41 public toilets.”

But SBC leader David Parker defended yesterday’s decision.

“Given the competing demands on how we should moderate the savings we have to make in a budget which is still very challenging financially, I think it was right to introduce the toilet charges.

“I did not agree with Councillor Turnbull that the quality of the facilities will not improve. If we get the predicted income stream, we will, with some capital investment, be able to invest in better public conveniences going forward.”