OKEHAMPTON Hamlets Parish Council has turned down a plea from its neighbouring council to contribute towards the hefty cost of maintaining the town’s public toilets — saying it could not justify spending money outside its own parish.

In a letter to Okehampton Town Council last week, Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council refused the town council’s request for a contribution towards the loos at Fairplace and Market Street, rejecting the town council’s view that as people in the Hamlets use the facilities they should contribute to them too.

The Hamlets council’s letter to the town council said: ‘Each council’s responsibilities are to budget for maintenance of their own assets irrespective of who uses them and to budget accordingly and implement cost-cutting measures if necessary.’ It had to prioritise its own parish services, it added.In the letter, parish clerk Jane Gillard wrote: ‘At our last meeting one of the key agenda items for the council was reviewing all our assets and the plans we wanted to do.‘When you’ve got a total that is too much you have to cut back. We are unable to do things we wanted to and we are cutting back on improvements in our area,’ she added.The Okehampton Hamlets council has also quoted covid as a factor in its decision to reject the town council’s request.The parish council said that more people have used the green spaces in the town since the beginning of the pandemic which has resulted in increased maintenance costs to these spaces.Okehampton Town Council took over the maintenance of the Market Street public toilets from the borough council in 2019 following the borough council’s announcement that it could no longer afford to keep them. However Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council is arguing it is not its duty to contribute towards maintenace costs, as the town council took the decision to take them over and they are within the town itself.The response has provoked disappointment from Okehampton town coucncillors who had hoped for a closer working relationship with Okehampton Hamlets Parish Council.Okehampton town councillor Christine Marsh, said: ‘I appreciate what they are saying because we did take it on from the borough council but I hoped we could work closer together. ‘The town council has never looked to take over the Hamlets and the Hamlets has never looked to take over us, but we do impact each other.“[The toilets are] a facility we’ve got to keep. It’s a facility for everyone to enjoy but it’s a cost to the council.‘When you look at Okehampton it’s a small population and the borough council doesn’t take into account that there’s two parishes. So we need tourist money coming in. We can’t just have money going round and round. People coming [to the town] look to go to Okehampton, they don’t see Okehampton Town and Okehampton Hamlets.’Despite this failure to obtain extra funds, Cllr Marsh believes that the town council will ensure that the toilets will not need to be closed.The town council will discuss the letter and what to do next at its next meeting on January 17.