RUNNERS, truckers and taxi drivers are expected to have to cross their legs – as the last hope died for a condemned Old Town toilet block.

There had been hints that South Swindon Parish Council might step in to save the block on the corner of Evelyn Street and Marlborough Road.

However, at a meeting this week, parish councillors confirmed that they were not interested in taking it on from the borough council – who believe it could take £20,000 just to make the block useable.

Councillor Stan Pajak – a keen jogger – said that the toilets had been a useful pit stops on runs out towards south west Swindon.

And Cathy Caulfield of running club Swindon Shin Splints said the toilets would “be missed”. “There aren’t many public toilets left in Swindon,” she said. “Runners notoriously go behind bushes, so they [the Emlyn Street toilets] will be missed.”

Last month, South Swindon Parish Council’s clerk Joyce Holman wrote to borough property manager Kathy Sherratt hinting that the parish “may be interested” in the disused toilet block.

The block was originally discussed last year, when the shadow parish council considered taking it on.

But, with the toilets mostly used by taxi drivers and deliverymen, they opted to take over the Town Gardens block instead.

Coun Chris Watts, chairman of the parish council, said: “I’ve driven past it a couple of times and I’ve thought that it might be a nice little building the parish could use for something else. I was thinking of a depot.”

But, after discussing it with council officers, it became clear that the parish – which already has a workers’ depot in Town Gardens – did not need another site.

Parish councillors agreed to drop their interest in the block.

But there was at least one disappointed voice in the meeting. Runner Stan Pajak said: “It was a well-used toilet, but its clientele weren’t the normal residents of Old Town.

“I’d still say, if you run from Coate Water to where I live you do sometimes stop at that toilet. It was used by other people besides taxi drivers. It did have a following.”

Borough officers are due to bid this month for cash to carry out the demolition. Coun Nick Burns-Howell pushed for the block to be replaced with appropriate landscaping: “I’m reluctant to just allow a wasteland to pop-up.”

Did you use these toilets? Let us know how their demolition will affect you? Message us on Facebook or email newsdesk@swindonadvertiser.co.uk.