04/05/2025

In 4 weeks, I am starting Borough 2 Boro Marchester- a 345 mile walk to raise awareness of young people’s mental health.

Some have asked what I am most worried about for this walk. Some may think it’s walking 20+ miles a day and others may think it’s the logistical issues surrounding the organising of it. Whilst these are both issues, they are not the biggest issue. 

The biggest issue for me, which may come as a surprise to many, is toilet access.

Public toilets are few and far between 

Whilst I can recall multiple issues of struggling to find a toilet, my main issues with toilet access first arose in the run up to the pandemic, when I became a food delivery rider for one of the food delivery firms (the likes of Just Eat/Uber Eats/Deliveroo). Despite us delivering food for the likes of restaurants, petrol stations and supermarkets, we weren’t allowed to use their staff toilets. With us being self employed, the burden of responsibility of who’s liable to provide us toilets was thing of one saying it’s the others responsibility. Pre-COVID, places like McDonalds were often an option to us, however, one in London doesn’t have customer toilet and, with me working nights, a few are drive thru only at night meaning we can’t access the toilet after a certain time. Once the first lockdown toilet access was made worse by most places closing their toilets. On the one time I Googled a public toilet, I went to the location for it to be nowhere in site (likely closed but the website wasn’t updated). Given This meant that, for my entire shift, I would have no access to a toilet. This, combined with the difficulties generally in the job and the additional stresses of the pandemic, led it being a mentally challenging job to be in at times. 

Despite having changed jobs and COVID restrictions being a thing of the past, the issue of toilet access is still prevalent. 

When I require the restroom, I tend to walk into a business, ask to buy a drink and, prior to paying, enquire whether they have a restroom. The responses I tend to get are either yes they do, or no they don’t. If they do, I pay for the drink. The drink is often one I don’t want but I am happy to make a contribution to the business, irrespective if it’s a family run business or a large firm with branches in all continents of the world.

In the run up to the Brighton Marathon, when I did a practice walk, I had two restaurants refuse me toilet access in quick succession, with one having no drinks on sale and then stating toilets are for customers only, despite asking to buy a drink and the other stating you need to buy a 3 course meal to be allowed to use it and that I should just go to the supermarket next door (which has no toilets). 

Combined with the worry of walking through residential with few or businesses with customer toilets, the worry of being denied has been heightened since then. Now, you may say I should’ve just paid for the item then queried the toilet; the issue is I’d be wasting money if it transpires their toilets are either out of service or they simply don’t have one. 

Sadly the issue surrounding toilet access isn’t just restricted to when I am walking. Yesterday, whilst doing 17km around the streets of Manchester, I had a great experience where, in 2 separate coffee shops, they stated I didn’t even need to buy the drink (and one even offered water for free which, whilst it may seem small, small gestures like that don’t go unnoticed). The issue, however, was my commute home. 

Deciding at around 8pm it was time to go home, I managed to get on the bus at around 20:45. Following my 50 minute bus ride on the first bus, I ended up missing my connecting bus and had a 55 minute wait for my next bus, which meant my commute home was 3 hours long. This is a common occurrence when commuting home from work due to the bus schedules and the length of my commute. The issue is, despite the bus station having overnight cleaners, the toilets close at 9pm Monday – Saturday, 4:30pm on Sundays and 5pm on Bank Holiday’s which are before my arrival due to my work schedule. Despite having a Radar Key, the key used to access disabled toilets across the UK, this is of no use as they even lock the disabled toilets outside of their opening hours. Now, the solution, you may think, is to just go to the toilet before leaving work. Sadly that is the last thing I do before leaving the premises every single day but it still makes my commute home challenging. Whilst this doesn’t prevent me going out, it can lead to very stressful situations. For others, however, this could be a barrier to just leaving the house in the morning. 

I feel that Councils within the UK need to do more surrounding 24/7 toilet access, whether that be having more toilets, paying businesses to enable the use of their toilets to be used by non-customers or have it acceptable to pay a fee to use private toilets (e.g. coffee shops that have customer toilets). Similarly, I feel more businesses need to provide toilets to paying customers (e.g. take away shops that, right now, often only have staff toilets).