PUBLIC toilets throughout Craven could face closure in 2004 because they will be too expensive to bring up to standard.

Craven District Council has 21 toilets throughout the district, but it does not have any legal obligation to provide them, Coun David Crawford told Hellifield Parish Council.

New regulations are due in 2004 - the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and Public Conveniences - which will require all public conveniences to have a disabled facility provided it is reasonable to upgrade.

At present 11 of Craven's loos have disabled facilities.

For Craven District Council to bring all its toilets up to standard will cost around £700,000, Greg Robinson, the council's director of operations, told the Herald.

He said: "This exceeds, by a considerable margin, the council's current capital resources and there is no possibility of any more of the conveniences being upgraded before the provision of the Disability Discrimination Act comes into force."

Mr Robinson said the council was looking to work in partnership with other bodies to provide public loos, as had already happened at Kettlewell with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority.

The district council might also team up with parish councils, he added.

"If no joint provision can be found the council can either close the facilities, or continue to provide the existing facilities as they are at present. It could be argued that where the council cannot for reasons of size, location and even cost, provide a facility for the disabled, the existing facility could remain open," said Mr Robinson.

If the council closed all its toilets, it would save £280,000 a year, and the future for some loos looks bleak.

A digital counting survey found nobody used the toilets at Cowling, Hebden and Bradley, there were just three visits to the loos at Ickornshaw and 17 at Sutton in a month.

"These results have led the council to question the need of provision in these areas, and indicate that future investment of the scale required could not easily be justified," added Mr Robinson.

Toilet refurbishment work has been estimated at an average of £80,000 per facility.

Hellifield Parish Council has been pressing for improvements to the village's public conveniences for years.

Coun Crawford told the parish council: "Hellifield toilets are scheduled for improvements in the next financial year, but as things are at the moment, there's going to be no money to do it."

The loos were in such a state that a resident had offered to paint them, said parish council chairman Jeremy Sample.

Coun Crawford said permission could be given, but the villager should be told that the loos were likely to close in the next two years.

Councillors wondered how the £80,000 figure was worked out, as it seemed to be a lot of money. "In the same amount of time it took them to refurbish Gargrave toilets, three five-bedroomed houses were built on the old garage site just down the road," pointed out Coun Sample.