Re the article ‘Timescale for introducing coastal car park charges is questioned’ in the Courier of August 29.

At the risk of appearing to repeat myself – which I frequently do – I note that council officials insist the plans to introduce charges at 10 coastal car parks are ‘on track’.

According to the Courier’s sources, the first car park to start charging will be Gullane. with a barrier system from October this year.

Since the budget is way underspent so far, can I please ask that before charges and barriers are introduced a decent beach/dunes public toilet is built/introduced at Gullane?

There is a dirty old shed somewhere that purports to be a toilet, I am told. It is appalling that you are going to charge people to park near the beach with no proper decent public toilets anywhere near and this is asking for mess and litter. Why should people pay where there are no proper facilities?

The changes already made to the car park there are excellent and the provision of litter bins far better now, but probably still not adequate for a good summer.

I met a family who were camping nearby what purports to be a toilet. They had a large tent, four adults, four small children and two large, well-behaved and well-controlled dogs.

They had camped there for one week and one of the ladies told me she had been going to clean the toilet in the shed herself daily with bleach as it was filthy. I am not sure if they should have been camping there or not – they were pleasant, well behaved, there was no litter in sight – but they told me the toilet shed was a disgrace.

Plans are on track are they? Well, why not tell us the costs of parking in detail, the cost of season tickets and all the details if they are so far ahead. Why all the secrecy – or does no one know?

We all pay the council rates/taxes and in this area they are – to some extent justifiably – high, but perhaps we should be told exactly what the money we give them is spent on, where and when and why?

October is less than four weeks away. It would be totally immoral to start charging without giving us all the details and properly building or upgrading a toilet which would need to be cleaned properly and regularly.

Can we have some answers please, in detail?

Pat Morris Address supplied