“Public toilets aren’t just a matter of convenience – for many Londoners, knowing there are clean, safe, and accessible toilets on the Tube can be the difference between saying yes to the event, going to the shops, or simply visiting friends.”

The City Hall Greens believe that public, clean, safe toilets are essential to making the tube a truly accessible transport option for every Londoner.

As a member of both the London Assembly’s Health Committee and Transport Committee, Caroline Russell was in the perfect position to push London’s Mayor to make good on his accessibility pledges across the Transport for London (TfL) network.

Starting with her campaign to secure more toilets for TfL’s own bus drivers (with a particular emphasis on locations for female drivers during their periods), Caroline expanded her campaign with a January 2023 motion to invest £20 million in new, free toilets at TfL stations.

In response, however, London’s Mayor countered with a lukewarm offer to publish a TfL Toilet Feasibility Study, following his party’s puzzling opposition to the motion to fund the toilets outright.

The Mayor’s team indicated the feasibility study would be shared by June 2023, but by August that deadline had been pushed back as well.  

Refusing to wait as the Mayor dragged his feet, Caroline published the ‘Loo League Table,’ analysing the many loo ‘deserts’ across the transport network and pushing TfL to explain its failure to make use of the existing upgrade programme on the tube to provide new toilet facilities. This report followed her 2021 “Toilet Paper” report as Chair of the London Assembly Health Committee, in which the committee found 91.3 per cent of respondents to their survey do not feel toilet provision is adequate to meet their needs.  

In January 2024, Caroline announced the successful allocation of £3 million for public toilets on the TfL network in the Mayor’s budget, though urged the Mayor to commit to the full £20 million investment needed to ensure every tube stop has a safe, clean, and operable public toilet.  

Building on that momentum, in February 2024 Caroline commissioned new polling from YouGov showing that 74 per cent of respondents believe that there should be more toilets on the TfL network. 

The following month, in March 2024 Caroline pressed the Mayor directly over the latest delay in his long-promised feasibility study, where the Mayor explained that while “good progress has been made” on the feasibility study, TfL now plans to “publish the full study in the summer.”   

Though a bit past the end of summer 2024, Caroline proudly joined Deputy Mayor for Transport Seb Dance and TfL Customer Director Emma Strain at White Hart Lane station in October 2024 to launch the feasibility study.

After reviewing the study, Caroline thanked the Mayor and TfL for keeping toilets free, staffing full-time attendants to keep them clean, and upholding a commitment to accessibility. However, Caroline maintained that his ‘big’ £3 million toilet investment is still millions shy of what her own research report demonstrated is needed.

Working closely with TfL, campaigners, and local residents, Caroline will continue to push for more toilets across the TfL network.