PUBLIC toilets in Gunnislake and Calstock will be kept open after almost unanimous support from residents who responded to a survey.

Some 170 out of 174 people who filled in a questionnaire by Calstock Parish Council wanted to keep the loos.

Cornwall Council decided to withdraw from providing and maintaining around half of the public toilets in the county. The authority says it does not have a statutory duty to run these facilities and has been liaising with town and parish councils with a view to devolving their operation.

The parish council had agreed to run the toilets for an initial period of one year to find out the views from the community. It has secured a grant of £7,000 from Cornwall Council this year but there is no guarantee any funding will be available in the future, leaving the parish to find £14,000 — 10% of its budget — from the precept annually to keep them open.

The cost to every household in the parish to maintain the toilets will be slightly less than £5 a year.

Cllr Dick Hoile said at a meeting of Calstock Parish Council last week: 'In terms of the questionnaire there is fairly strong support from the community that this council is right in its policy to keep its toilets.'

Both sets of toilets are being repainted and upgraded with new washing facilities — the first time in ten years that work has been carried out on them.

Mr Hoile added: 'We did not want to use 10% of our budget without doing some public consultation because that is quite a bit of money, but now we know that it is what the public wants we will be committed to keeping the public conveniences and maintaining them for the foreseeable future.'