Isle of Wight public toilet concerns for Ryde Esplanade

South Western Railway (SWR) and the Isle of Wight Council (IWC) say they won't maintain the loos at Ryde Esplanade train station and Ryde Town Council (RTC) says it has been left to do it.

It  comes after the former Western Gardens public loos — widely thought to be the busiest on the Island — were knocked down to make way for a new road to Ryde Pier.

The loos were owned by the IWC but leased to RTC, which took on the maintenance and cleaning.

There were reassurances the public toilets would be replaced — by refurbishing toilets inside Ryde Esplanade train station.

The former toilets at the bottom of Ryde Pier.

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Now, a disagreement has broken out over who will be responsible for them.

RTC has claimed SWR told the council it feels it is "fulfilling its obligation" to the public by only opening one disabled toilet for those with a radar key.

The train company has "pushed [RTC] into a corner", Ryde Cllr Phil Jordan said at a meeting last month — if the town council did not maintain the toilets, SWR would not open them.

SWR declined to comment but said it was the IWC who agreed to fund and deliver bringing the redundant toilets back into use, as part of the wider interchange project, and it was not the intention of SWR to install them otherwise.

The IWC has now also said it never intended to manage the toilets but it intended to ensure public toilets facilities in the area were not lost.

A spokesperson for the IWC said RTC was included in discussions at every stage and while it "did not have a definitive answer to the operation/management [of the toilets] from the outset, the fallback position was always no different than previously agreed for Western Gardens."

The town council, however, said it was told SWR would be maintaining the facilities but was approached during the summer to take on the cleaning.

It 'reluctantly' agreed to do so, it said, and at no charge to the train company, but was later given a lease to fully maintain the toilets and part of the station, which would cost 'a lot of money'.

RTC said it was keen to see the toilets open as soon as possible but it doesn't want any unnecessary financial risk for the authority or local taxpayers.

Negotiations around the lease continue and the outcome will be reported back to a future RTC meeting.