The London Assembly has produced a new tool to help improve the availability of data on public toilets, and we would welcome your views. 

Over the past few months the Health and Public Services Committee has been investigating the provision of public toilets across the capital.  We know that many Londoners – especially older people, parents with young children and those with specific health conditions rely on the provision of quality, accessible public toilets.

One of our key findings is that the information published about the location and accessibility of public toilets is really important.  Most London boroughs do publish lists and/or maps showing where you can find a toilet in their areas, with some additional information about disabled access, baby changing facilities, and so on.  But each borough publishes different types of data in different formats.

There are a number of private and voluntary initiatives to create web-based resources showing public toilet locations, including smartphone applications.  These could be very helpful for Londoners, but their effectiveness depends on the quality of the data published by toilet providers.

Assembly Members identified that to improve the quality and availability of public toilets data, a new standard data format was needed.  So we took it upon ourselves to produce one.  To do this we collaborated with developers, providers and other experts, and allowed people to contribute directly to our emerging draft standard via Google Docs.

You can find the new standard format – along with guidance on how to use it – on our website and on the London Datastore.  The format is in spreadsheet form, containing fields for all of the relevant information people may need to know about each toilet, such as precise location details, whether it is wheelchair accessible, opening hours and any charges for usage. 

We hope this new format will be adopted by all data owners in the future.  This would make it easier for people to develop and maintain applications to help people find facilities.  Alongside the spreadsheet we have produced guidance for data owners in how to use it.

Ideally, authorities will publish their data in a non-proprietary format such as csv,  However, our template is in a proprietary format because we think this will make it more likely that more authorities will be willing and able to use it – we are taking, as one developer suggested, a ‘pave the cowpaths’ approach, encouraging data holders to take the first step by publishing their data in a common structure across different authorities rather than seeking perfection at this stage.

We hope this new format will be adopted by all data owners in the future.  This would make it easier for people to develop and maintain applications to help people find facilities.  Alongside the spreadsheet we have produced guidance for data owners in how to use it.

We would welcome any comments or suggestions about the new standard format.  If you would like to share your views please comment on this post or email richard.berry@london.gov.uk no later than Monday 25 July.  After this date we will be asking toilet providers to fill in a final version of the spreadsheet with their own data.

Victoria Borwick
Chair, Health and Public Services Committee