Wait is over as eco-toilets arrive in Melksham

THE long-awaited eco-toilets have now arrived in the King George V Park, after a series of rescheduled dates over the past year.

The two eco-modular toilet pods arrived on Friday 28th April and will both be located by the Pavilion, at a cost of £33,295. One toilet has been installed and is open for public use. Whilst the second toilet has arrived, it has not yet been installed.

The toilet pods will use a new technology requiring no electricity or water, instead breaking down waste in a vault using worms, making them environmentally friendly and sustainable.

Calne-based company Healthmatic, which manufacture and install the toilets, will be managing them for a minimum of one year, before Melksham Town Council take over the responsibility.

At the town council’s asset management and amenities meeting on Monday 11th April, a representative from Healthmatic said, “These are the first of these types being installed in the UK. We are very grateful to have this opportunity to install them in Melksham.

“The reason this is very exciting is quite straight forward actually, composting toilets have an issue historically in that they require quite a big hole in the ground and they have only a finite number of trips you can make to each site per day. If you had a high-volume location like your park, the toilet becomes unusable. I went around Europe trying to find a solution to how you can have high composting toilets. We found [these toilets] in France, I went out to various sites where they make them and it generally is a high-volume toilet.

“It’s a good venture for Melksham to be on because I have got plans for this toilet that are properly global.”

Charging

Melksham’s eco-toilets are funded out of the initial £50,000 budget which was available for the Bath Road project. During the meeting, a discussion was had among councillors about whether to attach a small charge for the use of the toilets to offset the potential costs for upkeep, to be paid via contactless or cash, when Melksham Town Council take over responsibility for the pods.

Cllr Saffi Rabey said, “There has been a huge amount of feedback we’ve had with Wiltshire Council wanting to force payment via apps and smart payments. Elderly people I work with particularly don’t trust contactless and would rather pay by cash. I personally would feel uncomfortable for the only way people can pay to go to loo is contactless, I think that I would not be happy with that.”

Cllr Tom Price said, “Putting a charge on these toilets will only discourage residents actually using the thing we are trying to encourage residents to use.

“I understand there’s positives of potentially charging as it may stop people going in there. There’s always going to be charges incurred for anything we do. There are charges with the Splashpad and we don’t charge for that, I don’t feel it’s morally right. It feels so wrong for me. We have young children and the elderly enjoying the park and the toilets are a short walk. We’re supplying these, let’s just offer them up for free and find a way to soak up the cost.”

Cllr Gary Cooke said, “We are an age friendly town. If we start charging, we are not looking after our age friendly residents. The payback of putting these toilets in is quite a long way down the road before they actually ever become cost neutral. We are not a destination town for tourists. Tourists you can charge to use the toilets, we want out residents to use them and we can retrospectively [charge] if it comes to it.”

Councillors agreed for the toilets to be open free of charge but may explore the possibility of charging for their use at a later date.

Vandalism

Councillors also acknowledged the risk of vandalism and the potential for the toilets to attract anti-social behaviour, following concern from a resident that the wooden material of the pods, would be a fire hazard. The resident said, “We know there has been a fire in the park of the benches which were fire resistant, and they went up in flames. I know from another site that the so-called wood went up in flames very quickly. It is a serious problem in this town.”

The units are situated in view of CCTV which has been installed. In response to concerns regarding anti-social behaviour, cllr Saffi Rabey said, “According to the latest police statistics, we have one of the lowest anti-social behaviour rates in the entire county so I really don’t see this being a huge issue.”

Melksham was due to be the first town in the country to have the eco-toilets. However, due to a series of rescheduled dates since April last year because of an ‘internal reorganisation’ at Healthmatic, eco-toilets were installed in Calne.