Charges brought in for the public to ‘spend a penny’ in Tenby have been unavoidable, local councillors have said.

Recently, Pembrokeshire County Council introduced a 20p charge for using public conveniences in the resort, which has drawn a number of complaints from visitors to the town.

Correspondence from a Manorbier resident who said that they were “very taken aback” by the introduction of having to pay 20p to visit the toilets opposite the multi-storey car park on a visit this summer to the resort, came before members of Tenby Town Council at their meeting on Tuesday night.

“I put the new charge introduction down to the fact that the multi-storey and information centre have had an ‘uplift’ and therefore money somewhere would need to be claimed, however to my amazement, the tolet block near Castle Beach also had a charge! Why?” wrote Joanna Davies, who explained that she was a parent of three small children.

“If I or just one of us needed to use the facilities, I would have to pay for all of us to go in and, as you can appreciate, guaranteed after we had left the premises, one child would need to go and the whole process would need to be repeated - which not only would be stressful, but could work out costly.

“Having talked about this to other locals, I know that I am not the only one with this opinion,” she continued.

Responding to the letter, Clr. Mrs. Christine Brown said that there was very little that the town council could do about the situation as they had been expecting such a charge to come in for years.

“I agree that it’s not a perfect situation, but it’s just where we are today and the only way that the county council could find to making sure the facilities are kept open in the town,” commented Clr. Mike Evans.

“We wish that there wasn’t a charge at all, but this is something that is going to be rolled out around the county. We’ve had to fight in the past to make sure that our public conveniences are kept open all year round, and kept clean, and we have to praise the company Danfo for the job they’ve done.

“I do think that it’s not in good faith for the machines not to be able to give change to users, as if you’ve only got £4 coins in your pocket and there’s four of you, it’s going to cost you that much to go together! Maybe we could ask the county council to fit a mechanism on the facilities to give change,” continued Clr. Evans, with the town clerk adding that most of the complaints received were regarding the lack of change given.

“Our toilet facilities here at the De Valence, of course, are still open and extensively used,” added Clr. Evans.