I RECENTLY made a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Network Rail.
Thing is, I was down to meet some bods in King’s Cross and, before I headed back to Oxford, realised I needed a wee. In King’s Cross proper, you have to pay money to get access to a bog, but I remembered that if you walked a few hundred feet, the bogs in St Pancras International are free.
But after I’d had my wee, my little brain started thinking about how it would be if elderly and foreign folk like yours truly didn’t have spare change to “spend a penny” – or 30 pence to 50 pence as it is on Network Rail stations these days. Public toilets seem to have disappeared.
Network Rail’s reply is interesting, and you can find it here. I will follow this up.
NR has a transparency policy and it does make a profit on its bogs, if you take the time to read the reply. But, it insists that any money it makes is spent on “improving the facilities”.
It wants to discourage “illegal activities” and that’s why it’s thrown up barriers, although, let’s face it, 30 pence or 50 pence is hardly going to be a barrier to illegal activities in a bog.
I mean, call me cynical, but really Network Rail doesn’t give a toss about its customers and its bog policy, far from being transparent, is pretty damn opaque. ♣
