RESIDENTS will have the final say on whether public toilets should be kept open in the Calstock parish after April 2014.

All parishioners are being asked for feedback which will determine the future of the loos in Gunnislake and Calstock.

The parish council has agreed to run them for an initial period of one year to find out the views of the community, and has secured a grant of almost £7,000 from Cornwall Council.

But from next April the funding is expected to be withdrawn completely, leaving the parish council to find around £14,000 from the precept annually to keep them open.

Since this would be one of the largest expenditures for the council, equating to 14% of the whole precept, it was felt that the decision should be made by the community as a whole, and not councillors alone.

As a result of its spending reviews Cornwall Council has decided to withdraw from providing and maintaining around half of the public toilets in the county. The authority says it does not have a statutory duty to run these facilities and has been liaising with town and parish council with a view to devolving their operation.

The cost to every household in the Calstock parish to maintain the toilets would be slightly less than £5 per year. The alternative is to close them.

Chairman of the parish council Jerome Irons said: 'We are attempting to gauge parish-wide opinion, as all members of the parish are responsible for raising our precept.

'We are also looking at usage of both sets of toilets in as far as we are not aware how often they are in fact used.'

Questionnaires are available to fill in on the parish council website at wwwcalstockparishcouncil.org and in all the local shops in the area, including the post office, convenience stores and butchers in Gunnislake, Levine's in Calstock, the post offices in St Ann's Chapel and Harrowbarrow and the White Hart pub at Chilsworthy.

Cllr Irons added he believed the toilets were important to the community and should be fully supported by Cornwall Council.

'I find it very annoying that Cornwall Council to save money has forced the parish council to take both blocks of toilets on with an agreement for one year to offer 50% of the costs.

'With our relatively small precept of £100,000, the overall £14,000 to run these without any support would be one of our largest expenditures.

'As a parish council we are trying to find a solution and we are seeking to try and save money on the cleaning contract, currently with Cormac, by asking local cleaning contractors to provide quotes.'