Agenda item

            The Committee was reminded that a motion which had been proposed by former Councillor Ross McMullan calling for the introduction of a Changing Places Toilet Policy for Belfast City Council had been referred to the Committee on 1st September 2021. The Committee had adopted the motion and agreed that a report be brought to a subsequent meeting providing details on how it would be facilitated, resourced and managed.

            An update report was brought to the Disability Working Group on 10th October 2023, which endorsed the draft Policy and recommended that it be brought back to the Committee for approval. The Committee had, on 24th November 2023, approved the draft Changing Places Toilet Policy for public consultation. The public consultation began on 29th January 2024 and ended on 22nd April 2024.

            The final draft Changing Places Toilet Policy was reviewed by the internal CPT Officer Working Group on 29th August 2024, by CMT on 25th September 2024 and by the Disability WG on 11th December 2024.

            90 people responded to the Public Consultation and the findings were:

·        75.4% of the respondents agreed with the draft Changing Places Toilet Policy, with a smaller percentage (17.9%) disagreeing.

·        66% of the respondents used the Parks at least once week.

·        39.7% of the respondents have a disability.

·        57.5% of the respondents were carers/dependents.

            Two written responses were received which indicated that the wording of the draft policy was not acceptable, for example, the Council should be committed, and not to strive to do and that a commitment to a rolling programme of addressing the CPT deficit and toilet needs identified.

            Two main recommended amendments have been made to the final draft Policy. The final draft Policy now states that ‘the Council will commit to’, instead of ‘the Council will strive to’ provide as required a Changing Places facility in every large building.  Also, the Council will make it a commitment for large events being organised by external organisers/promoters to provide CPT facilities. The Council will also make an effort to include Changing Places facilities or to make toilet provision more accessible when extending or extensively refurbishing an existing Council-owned building when it is reasonable to do so.

            The Members were advised that the Council had received several requests recently in relation to improving physical access within Council owned toilets, including requests from a number of campaigns in relation to Stoma Friendly toilets and also correspondence from the Crohn’s and Colitis UK campaign “Not Every Disability Is Visible”.  These campaigns has each requested the introduction of disposable facilities with accompanying signage/posters promoting the various causes. 

            It was proposed that, in response to such requests, officers advise that one of the first steps in the implementation of the CPT policy would be an audit of all accessible toilet provision across the Council estate.  The purpose of this review would be to help identify any gaps and to quantify the level of resources which would be required to upgrade toilets and increase accessibility in order to make the toilets stoma, Crohns and colitis friendly.   

            Whilst the commitments in the policy could be met within existing budgets it was likely that there would be financial implications in the roll out of Changing Places Facilities following the audit of accessible toilet provision in the Council’s estate. 

             The Committee approved the draft Changing Places Toilet Policy as set out in Appendix 1 to the report.