An urgent agreement has been put in place to ensure that all 40 public toilets across Tendring are kept open for local residents and visitors to the District.

The short term future of the service was put under threat when cleaning contractors Fountains went into administration and made its staff redundant at 1pm on Monday.

However, within hours of the announcement Tendring District Council (TDC) and Veolia Environmental Services UK Ltd joined forces to come up with a temporary solution.

An emergency meeting between the Council and Veolia led to a deal being struck and the paperwork being signed off by 2pm yesterday.

The company, which is also TDC's waste, recycling and street cleansing contractor, will provide a cleaning service for the toilets up until September 30, 2012 with the opportunity to renew for a further three months.

Veolia also agreed to take on all the 12 Fountains staff who had previously worked on the contract.

One of the options the Council was forced to consider was to close the toilets until the contract could be put out to tender which could have taken up to nine months but decided against it.

Nick Turner, TDC's Cabinet Member for the Environment, praised all those involved in moving so swiftly to maintain frontline facilities for residents and visitors alike.

"It is a tribute to our staff and our relationship with Veolia that both sides swung into action and resolved this issue promptly," he said.

"It could easily have taken months to sort out the transfer of staff and all the necessary arrangements to take over the contract.

"Fortunately, due to the willingness of both parties, a deal was struck within hours of the collapse of Fountains."

Cllr Turner said it is an excellent example of partnership working to ensure the public did not suffer.

"Everyone was totally committed to coming up with an immediate arrangement to deal with this issue and it just shows what can be done," he added.

The Council managed to keep open a toilet in each of its main town centre sites deploying its own staff along with local building maintenance contractor AJ Wicken to do so.

Fountains staff that transferred over to Veolia will be inducted this morning and will be issued with vans and equipment.

It is expected that all TDC's 40 public conveniences will return to use tomorrow.

"It is also excellent news that 12 local people have been offered work by Veolia at a time when they were facing redundancy," said Cllr Turner.

TDC will go out on a formal tender process for the cleaning contract once a review strategy for the service has been agreed by Cabinet and the Service Development and Delivery Committee in March.

25/1/12