Town councillors have today re-advertised the tender for running the toilets on Dover seafront, together with the shop concession that has been created in the building.

The decision to go out to tender again, taken at a full council meeting last Wednesday night, follows a previous vote at a special meeting on August 7 not to accept a bid from a community interest company - set up by one of the councillors and her business partner - to operate the facility at East Cliff.

As a result, the toilets will not be open this year, and may stay closed until next Easter.

Pebbles had been founded by former Mayor Cllr Sue Jones and Ross Miller to operate various facilities to attract more visitors to the town.

But when the tender deadline passed, theirs was the only bid, and, despite wanting the toilets opened “as soon as possible”, councillors decided to start the process again.

Cllrs Gordon Cowan and Pam Brivio had compiled a report for the council in which they said it had always been the council’s intention to run the toilets “on a high season basis only”, from Good Friday to October 1, unless whoever was given the job wanted to increase those opening hours.

Cllr Cowan said they now had a “much bigger time span” to advertise the tender, and it was felt that it should be advertised more widely than it was before.

“I hope there will be a good number of tenders that come in,” he said.

Full story in the Dover Mercury, October 3.