A ROW has broken out over the public toilets in Princetown, after the parish council decided to raise the precept by £5,000 to help pay for their upkeep, without consulting residents first.

Dartmoor Forest Parish Council agreed to make a £5,000 donation to West Devon Borough Council towards the facility, after fears that the toilets might be closed under the borough's budget cutting plans.

But villagers are angry that they will have to pay for a toilet block which they rarely use — the impact will be £12 a year on a Band D property.

Mike Kinsey from Princetown said: 'I am shocked and very disappointed that the parish council, which is surely supposed to represent us, has taken what was bound to be a controversial decision without canvassing public opinion and without publicising the fact that the matter was to be decided.

'I have no wish to pay around £20 a year extra to support a toilet block for people who, in the main, do not support Princetown financially. After all, anyone who is spending in our pubs and cafes will also be using the loos in them.'

The toilets cost £18,700 a year to run and are part funded in the winter by Dartmoor National Park Authority.

Local resident Heather Stanley said residents already subsidised the national park through their rates and did not think they should be 'hit twice'.

Joy Easterbrook said she would not want the public toilets to close but she did not want to pay for them either: 'It is a lot of money a year on top of everything else,' she said.

Chairman of Dartmoor Forest Parish Council Dave Fisher said the people of Princetown may not use the public toilets in the village but they probably did use ones in other towns they visited.

'If everyone felt this way there would be no public toilets,' he said. 'We have a lot of visitors here who go letterboxing on the moor and the public convenience is there if they need it.

'It can put people off if there is no facility. I am sure the residents of Princetown would not want people peeing in their doorways.'

Mr Fisher said the parish council had to make a quick decision which was why there had been no public consultation: 'We had the information from West Devon just before Christmas so it was a bit of a rush.

'The council asked us to contribute to the toilets but we hope to recoup some of the money by charging a fee to use them.'

West Devon Borough Council has agreed to close several blocks of toilets in the borough to save money. In addition it is asking parish and town councils which have public toilets within their boundaries to provide 30% towards their running costs.

The authority said this was necessary in order to look at making potential savings for the council in discretionary budget areas, given the tough financial challenges it faced.