A toilet block at a cemetery has been removed.

Swale council removed the facility from Halfway Cemetery on Sheppey on Friday, despite a petition to save it.

It means people visiting the village will now have to travel more than one mile to Queenborough to access the nearest public loos.

The decision to axe the facilities was met with anger from locals.

One person said: “So if, like myself, you have to walk from Sheerness to visit and back again, what do we do if in need? Ridiculous.”

Others were quick to comment on the need for toilets at the cemetery.

“My mum has recently been buried there and I take my 85-year-old dad to visit her," another explained.

“He is in a wheelchair and it is a fairly long walk to get him there, so those toilets have been needed for him several times.”

A fourth person said: "Why have they been removed?

"For all the people who go down there to see loved ones, they now have to cut short their time due to no toilets."

When asked why they have been a closed, a spokesman for Swale council said: “Councillors at the environment committee made the decision to remove the temporary public toilet facilities at Halfway Cemetery on June 29.

“These facilities were used considerably less than any other public toilet in Swale.

“There will be fewer funerals now the cemetery is full and not offering new plots – reducing the need for the facilities even further.”

A petition was created by Cllr Mike Whiting (Queenborough and Halfway) in a bid to save the loos.

Speaking earlier this summer, the KCC representative for Swale stated they were closed "all to save a couple of thousand pounds".

He added: "I argued against the closure of the toilets at Halfway Cemetery and thank everyone who contacted me or signed the petition.

“It's the only public toilet in the area since the closure of the toilets at the traffic lights.

“Many people contacted me opposing this."

The council says it will undertake "an initial general tidy of the area" before assessing the longer-term options of facilities in the village.