FLORENCE Park in Cowley is one of the city’s most valuable public open spaces, and is in the midst of dense housing.

The Friends of Florence Park do a good job of supporting the park, and it is rightly very popular and very heavily used by all sorts of people for leisure, recreation, or simply walking – never more so than in the summer which is fast approaching.

It is therefore hugely disappointing to the local residents who have raised this issue with me, that for many months the public loos in the park have been closed by the city council.

I understand that the gents’ loos were vandalised and had to be closed in 2008, and as a result men were using the ladies’ loos so they too had to be closed.

Surely a more sensible response by the council would be to repair the gents’, and manage them properly to prevent antisocial behaviour?

Many months later, the council, despite, I’m sure, local councillors also raising the matter, still seems incapable of performing the pretty simple task of repairing the loos and maintaining and managing them.

Is it that, over the past months, the council hasn’t seen the Florence Park facilities as important? Or is it that it is so inefficient it is not able to carry out even the simplest of tasks swiftly?

Please just get on with it and fix the loos!

Ed Argar, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford East