WANTED: Excellent, accessible loos at Abbey Meadow!

There are no toilets at any park in Oxfordshire that have facilities suitable for disabled children. Other counties have them!
• The replacement of toilets in Abbey Meadow is a fantastic opportunity for including toilets suitable for disabled children!
• In terms of their utility for the community using Abbey Meadow, the new toilets will actually be worse than what is there now… there will be only four individual cubicles compared with the seven toilets there now.
• Spending money on inadequate and unsuitable facilities is fiscally irresponsible.
• Not spending money on toilets for disabled children is morally indefensible.

Here is a full list of the issues with the new toilet designs

1. No facilities at all for disabled children and adults who cannot self-transfer.
• At last! There is an inclusive playground in Abingdon. This has been extremely popular with families with disabled children from across the Vale this summer and with Kingfisher special needs school, but visits are time limited by a lack of toilet facilities. Why build an inclusive playground without inclusive toilets?
2. ‘Accessible’ toilets are not actually accessible.
• They are very small and based on the minimum standards for a standard ‘hospital-type’ wheelchair. They do not consider electric chairs or the larger, specialised chairs used by most disabled children. They do not consider mobility scooters. There is no room for any kind of carer assistance.
3. Too few toilets.
• We are going from 6 toilets in traditional stalls plus disabled loo to 4 individual cubicles. 7 to 4 is a massive downgrade.
4. Child safeguarding and safety
Two of the toilet doors are on the unobserved Mill Stream side and will be further obscured by decorative screens. What is to stop and adult forcing their way into an individual cubicle after a child and locking the door? No-one can hear or see what is going on in there.
5. Health issues
• What if someone becomes ill in an individual cubicle, or has a fall?
• How will anyone ever know? They could be in there all day.
6. False alarms
• The two ‘accessible’ toilets will need emergency pulls.
• Oh what fun it will be for children pulling on those irresistible red handles!
7. Nightmare logistics of taking multiple children (and yourself) to the toilet
• With the individual cubicles, the logistics of taking multiple children becomes a mathematical logic puzzle. Which child shall I leave outside on their own?
8. Children getting locked in… this happens surprisingly regularly.
• How do you extract a child from an individual cubicle which does not have a lock you can open from the outside?
9. Nefarious activities
• A nice private unisex cubicle… unobserved, quiet and discreet… what could people possibly get up to in there?