Fairlie Community Council believe the village are the big loo-sers over budget cuts to close the automated public toilets.

During their monthly meeting, acting chair Alistair Green said that he was astonished that there would be no council WC facility between Largs and Ardrossan.

Member Danny McCarthy called for the facts and figures behind the closure of the automated toilet based at Fairlie’s south car park.

And North Ayrshire councillor Tom Marshall obtained the figures and sent them onwards to the council who were shocked to learn that the annual lease for the facility is £28,840.

Community councillor David Telford said: “Who in their right mind could ever have agreed to an annual lease cost of £28,840 for a single toilet? You could build a brick and mortar, proper toilet like the one they pulled down for a fraction of that sum. No wonder NAC has no money!” The coinage use for the public ‘spending a penny’ at the village loo was 20p for each visit, and between January and December 2014, 2157 people used the toilet, bringing in a sum of £431.

That means, in effect, that it is costing the council £12.58 per user of the public amenity.

North Ayrshire Council announced during their budget cuts at the turn of the year that all automated public conveniences in the region would be closing over the course of the next three years.

Mr Green said that with moves to provide a cycle path, it didn’t make sense to close the toilets.

Mr Telford said: “It is a cut too far.” Another village councillor, Danny McCarthy, asked if the council had a statutory duty to provide public facilities, and Mr Telford said: “It seems ridiculous that they are not providing a toilet on ten miles of coastline.” A member of the public made the point about whether the police would have to relax on the spot fines for urinating in public if people were caught in a difficult situation when cycling or as pedestrians.

North Ayrshire Council agreed to close 14 automatic public conveniences during 2015/16 - 2017/18 on a phased basis. The Fairlie facility will be closed during this period although no specific date has been identified yet.

The council say they are ‘looking at other potential council premises that could be utilised’, and are also interested in working with community and businesses to look at suitable alternative arrangements where practicable. The toilets are rented from JC Decaux. There were two public toilets in the village up until 2007, and the ‘superloo’ facility was installed in 2008, although was not opened until four months after being erected. Local residents complained to the ‘News’ at the time that North Ayrshire Council had demolished ‘a perfectly good working toilet’,