Sir,

At last year’s Summer Spectacular, Castle Beach toilets were open and well-used throughout the evening. In fact, to anyone spending the evening on Castle Hill, they were something of a lifeline (after popping down the harbour and contributing some money to the Rotary/Round Table of course.)

This year, I expected the situation would be the same, except of course the slight inconvenience of paying 20p for the privilege, but hey, if it means the toilets are a bit cleaner and well-maintained, it’s a good price to pay.

However, when I arrived, I found shutters down on the male/female toilets leaving only one lone disabled toilet open which led to a queue of around 20 people, most of whom would have probably been quite happy to pay 20p to use the toilet.

This also would have inconvenienced disabled people, many of whom would have needed access to a toilet quickly and without a huge queue.

However, I am sure this is all part of Pembrokeshire County Council’s plan to improve services and save money by outsourcing to private companies Progress indeed.

Lee Sefton,

• In response, Pembrokeshire County Council spokesman, Len Mullins, said: “We understand the need for extra toilet provision at events such as the Tenby Summer Spectacular and we do amend our operations to cover this and other events throughout the year with extra staff, more cleans and longer opening times.

“For the Tenby Summer Spectacular events, we planned our provision to keep the public toilets at Castle Beach open for an extra two hours, therefore closing at 10 pm.

“Unfortunately, at the event, we experienced problems with members of the public abusing the facilities. In consultation with police officers that were on duty at the event, the decision was taken to close the unit at 9 pm to avoid more problems occurring.

“Temporary toilets are also available at the event for members of the public to use. However, please be assured that we understand the need to keep the toilets open longer on these occasions and we will endeavour to keep the toilets open until 10 pm at the remaining events.”