Oswestry to get fully accessible 'Changing Places' facilities at car park toilets

Changing Places are fully accessible toilets with a height-adjustable changing bench, a hoisting system, a peninsular toilet and enough space for a disabled person, their wheelchair and two carers.

The Central Car Park toilets are to be upgraded by Oswestry Town Council, which owns and runs the public loos.

Councillors at a recent meeting agreed to carry out the upgrade but as yet have not made a decision over whether they will remain the "foyer" type with separate ladies' and gents' toilets or switch to the unisex cubicle toilets that have appeared in many towns across the country.

The council's finance committee discussed a cubicle system from provider, Healthmatic, which was recommending a system not defined by gender. It says that four cubicles would provide adequate provision for 60,000 uses.

Income figures highlight that current usage is in the region of 50,000.

Councillors agreed to go forward with upgrading and that whatever the design, it must include a Changing Places unit.

Town clerk Arren Roberts said providing the facility was the main priority to ensure that Oswestry could be enjoyed by everyone.

A decision on which type of general toilets to put in will be decided at a future meeting.

The council is also looking again at which payment machines to install in the Central Car Park.

A report to council had been provided giving details of machines that have the option to pay by cash or card.

However councillors were concerned at the cost.

To upgrade all 15 machines and have three with card payment would cost £9,669. To have all of them with card payments would cost just over £21,000.

In addition there would also be an 18p transaction fee for each ticket purchased. It would mean that for tickets for stays of an hour, 18 per cent would go to the providers of the machines, less for longer stays.

The council says upcoming changes to the internet means its current pay and display ticket machines on Central Car Park will become obsolete.

Mobile network operators are planning to decommission their 2G and 3G networks to push resources to 4G and 5G technology.

Henry Teuma, operations manager, said: “Vodafone, the service provider to the sim cards in our ticket machine modems, will be starting to decommission its 3G network from February 2023.

There also issues over the amount of cash that can be banked from the machines. have led the council to look for a new system.