Just 7.2% of Highland Council's public toilet maintenance and repair expenditure since 2023 has been attributed to vandalism. Obviously, the more that could be reduced the better!

Of the £382,407.54 spent maintaining and repairing the council's public toilets, around £27,500 has been specifically identified as vandalism-related.

Yet vandalism is increasingly being used to justify restricting opening hours, closing facilities and introducing arrangements that can leave communities being asked to take on responsibility for providing and running public toilets themselves.

That raises a fairly obvious question.

If vandalism accounts for only around 7.2% of the recorded maintenance and repair expenditure, why are ordinary members of the public increasingly being asked to bear the consequences?

Those closures were not all caused by vandalism although it is frequently voice above other causes.

The records include a mixture of problems, ranging from blocked drains and burst pipes to sewage issues, freezing conditions, maintenance work and deliberate damage.

A burst pipe is a maintenance problem. A blocked drain is a maintenance problem. Equipment reaching the end of its useful life is a maintenance problem.

Someone deliberately smashing fittings, causing flooding or damaging a building is something quite different.

But when vandalism is repeatedly presented as a reason for reducing access to public toilets, the public is entitled to ask how significant it actually is in the overall picture.

A further £9,050.64 had been spent during the first four months of 2026/27.

That gives a combined total of £382,407.54.

Against that, the council estimates that approximately £27,500 has been spent specifically dealing with vandalism since 2023 with new damaging in Fort William liekly to up the cost by a further £5000

But it does not change the fundamental point: the overwhelming majority of the recorded public toilet maintenance and repair expenditure has not been attributed to vandalism.

So why are opening hours being restricted?
Highland Council has introduced measures at locations experiencing vandalism and anti-social behaviour, including additional security, automatic door locking systems, local opening and closing arrangements and CCTV.

Some facilities have also had their opening hours reduced.

There may be circumstances where restricting access is a sensible temporary security measure.

But there is an obvious flaw in treating reduced opening hours as a solution to the problem.

People cannot switch off their need to use the toilet because the council has decided the building should be locked.

A person travelling through the Highlands at night still needs somewhere to go.

A family travelling with young children does not have the ability to schedule every toilet stop around council opening times.

Older people and disabled people may have particular difficulties if facilities are unavailable.

And for a region as geographically spread out as the Highlands, there can be a considerable distance between one public convenience and the next.

Closing a toilet may reduce the opportunity for vandalism, but it does not remove the need for toilet provision.

Highland Council's figures record six vandalism incidents in 2022/23, eight in 2023/24, four in 2024/25, 16 in 2025/26 and six so far in 2026/27.

That is 40 reported incidents across the periods covered by the council's figures.

The council says that more serious incidents are routinely reported to Police Scotland.

How many offenders have been identified?

How many have been charged?

How many cases have gone to court?

How many people have actually been prosecuted?

How many have been convicted?

And has anyone been required to pay compensation or otherwise contribute towards the cost of repairing the damage?

Those questions seem entirely reasonable when the consequences of vandalism can include a public facility being closed or its opening hours being restricted.

CCTV has already helped identify offenders
Highland Council has installed permanent CCTV at Wick and Viewforth in Fort William, two locations where vandalism has been a particular concern.

In Wick, CCTV footage has previously been used to identify young people involved in vandalism, with information passed to Police Scotland.

That is important because it demonstrates that identifying those responsible is possible.

The public should be able to understand what happens after an offender has been identified and whether the intervention actually prevents the behaviour from happening again.

If the same facilities continue to suffer repeated vandalism, simply locking the doors earlier cannot be regarded as the whole solution.

It is the cost to the person who turns up and finds the toilet closed.

That might be a visitor travelling through the Highlands, a local resident, a coach driver, a family with children, an older person, somebody with a disability or someone who simply has nowhere else nearby to go.

For them, the issue is not whether the council has spent £27,500 or £50,000 repairing vandalism.

The issue is whether there is a functioning toilet when they need it.

That distinction becomes particularly important when opening hours are reduced as an anti-vandalism measure.

The people being inconvenienced are generally not the people who caused the damage.

And meanwhile, the burden is being pushed towards communities
This is where the wider Highland Council approach to public toilets becomes increasingly concerning.

The council has promoted arrangements such as the Comfort Scheme, under which businesses and community organisations can provide toilet access to members of the public.

There is nothing wrong with communities and businesses choosing to provide additional facilities. Many already do an enormous amount to support their local areas.

But there is a very big difference between a community choosing to provide an additional service and a community being expected to take on responsibility because the council finds the existing service difficult or expensive to operate.

Running a public toilet is not simply a matter of unlocking a door.

There are cleaning costs, water and electricity bills, maintenance, repairs, insurance, health and safety responsibilities and, potentially, the same vandalism problems that the council is already struggling to deal with.

In other words, transferring a toilet to a community does not necessarily make the underlying problem disappear.

It can simply transfer the responsibility for dealing with it.

They run halls, organise events, maintain community facilities, support local projects and fill gaps where public services have been reduced.

They do so because they care about their communities.

But goodwill should not be confused with unlimited capacity.

A community organisation taking on a public toilet may be taking on a significant ongoing commitment, rather than simply acquiring a useful local asset.

And if vandalism is one of the reasons the council says facilities are difficult to operate, communities need to ask themselves whether they are really being offered an asset or being handed a problem.

Public toilets are particularly important in the Highlands
It is easy to underestimate the importance of public toilets if you look only at the number of people living immediately around a particular facility.

Communities are separated by long distances, public transport can be limited and the population using roads and visitor destinations can increase dramatically during the tourist season.

A toilet serving a small rural community can also be serving thousands of people travelling through it.

That makes public toilet provision part of the wider infrastructure supporting both Highland communities and the visitor economy.

It is therefore not enough simply to say that public conveniences are not a statutory requirement.

Something does not have to be legally required for it to be necessary.

Every closure has its own circumstances, and it would be wrong to suggest that vandalism is responsible for every problem in the network.

In fact, the council's own figures demonstrate that it is not.

That is precisely why the distinction between general maintenance and vandalism matters.

A toilet that is repeatedly closed is not providing the same service as one that is reliably available.

Likewise, a facility with heavily restricted opening hours may technically remain open while becoming considerably less useful to the people who depend upon it.

Because there is one very simple fact that should not be lost in all of this:

The people who need to use Highland's public toilets are not the people who should not be locked out.