Where can I expect to find Public Loos in London

Question

I noticed public toilets in a tube station. Are there any “rules of thumb” as to where to expect such public facilities in London?

Answer 1

There are a number of options to find out more.

Transport for London has a page with links to facilities at stations in its network (which are free unless run by a third party) https://tfl.gov.uk/help-and-contact/public-toilets-in-london

There is also the Great British Toilet map https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/ which is interactive. It is not exclusive to London.

I have not tried to do a search on either of them since I only visit places I know already in London.

Answer 2

Sad to say I know of no reliable predictor. Many public conveniences are permanently closed. The different tube lines seem to have different policies. The Metropolitan Line stations near me do have toilets, but some are open only at certain times and others are permanently closed. For example, Eastcote and Rayners Lane station toilets are never open, Harrow-on-the-Hill and Alperton seem to be open reliably, Baker Street toilet is closed from 11:00 to 12:00 and Watford is closed at weekends, unless Watford FC are playing. It does seem that major main-line stations such as Kings Cross and Liverpool Street have reliable options.

One option to bear in mind is that there are accessible toilets that can only be accessed if you have a RADAR key. These keys can be freely obtained from online retailers. So, as an exammple, the only toilet at Gospel Oak station is one such accessible toilet.

I find that a search on Google Maps yields reliable results for public conveniences. I am also pretty shameless about using Pub toilets.

Answer 3

I don't visit London very often, but I doubt it's that different from the rest of the UK, so I hope my experiances will generally be useful.

"true" public toilets are increasingly rare in the UK due to council budget cutbacks. Some have also started charging.

Restaurants, cafes, pubs etc (but generally not takeaways) are required to provide toilets for their customers, how exactly they do this varies though. If the cafe is a stand-alone building it will nearly always have customer toilets inside, but if it's part of a larger building the toilets may be provided inside the larger building. Some places try to restrict toilets to customers only, they can't really enforce this, but it's polite to buy something.

Indoor shopping centres will usually provide toilets for all users of the shopping centre. The same tends to be true of major rail termini, many of them effectively double up as shopping centres and will provide toilets for the use of both passengers and the users of the shopping center.

Medium size rail stations will often have toilets too (as a rule of thumb, most stations where "intercity" trains stop will have toilets), but they are often inside the ticket barriers.

I don't have that much personal experiance with the London undeground, but looking at the map someone else posted it seems toilets are the exception in the city centre but become more common as you move further out. I suspect this is because the stations outside the center are designed more like rail stations with more facilities on the surface, while in the centre they were trying to minimise space used on the surface.

Large stores will often have toilets, though this can be hit and miss. If a store has an "in-store cafe" it can be expected to also have toilets.

Museums, libraries etc will usually provide toilets for their visitors, if entry is free nothing stops you from using them.