JUDGEMENT day is looming for four public lavatories in the Malvern Hills district which look set to be closed at the end of this month.

Malvern Hills District Council has, since August, been discussing plans to close public lavatories in Edith Walk and Victoria Road in Great Malvern at the end of February.

The proposals will also see the Market Street toilets in Tenbury Wells and High Street toilets in Upton-upon-Severn also closed at the same time.

The plans have been met by fierce opposition from Malvern, Tenbury and Upton's respective town councils, who wrote to the district council in November asking for a meeting to look at the possible alternatives.

District councillors initially resolved to close the toilets in August. They have since met the councils concerned proposing they took over maintenance, but this was unanimously rejected.

Under the plans, being put to the authority's executive committee at its next meeting on Tuesday, February 21, Upton and Tenbury's lavatories would be offered for sale.

The toilets in Malvern's Victoria Road would be demolished and surfaced over to provide additional car parking.

And the Edith Walk lavatories would be offered commercially or demolished.

But Malvern town council chairman Councillor Ralph Madden branded the decision a disgrace.

He added: "I'm astonished that a council that can afford to build new offices for themselves costing £6.5m, refurbish their own toilets in the council house, and also be awarded a better settlement from the Government this year can turn around and propose these plans.

"All of these towns are engaged in trying to increase tourist numbers and it seems to me to be an appalling decision."

However, the district council's spokesman for environmental and economic wellbeing Councillor Roger Sutton defended the authority's stance, saying it was spending about £300,000 on upgrading one toilet in each of the towns to have a first-class facility in each. He stressed it was not a cost-cutting exercise, and added that the authority would spend the same amount of money maintaining fewer lavatories.

He added: "I think people will find the standards of our toilets are a vast improvement on what they were before.

"What we haven't done and don't intend to do is upgrade some very poor quality facilities in these towns which are not a credit to the community."