Total Solution Helps Optimise Quality & Whole Life Costs in School Building

A holistic approach to toilet provision can help education authorities optimise their share of the £8billion ‘Building Schools for the Future’ and the additional £96m Schools Access Initiative 2010/11 budgets, whilst simultaneously delivering better facilities for pupils and achieving reduced whole life costs.

Total Hygiene, the UK’s leading supplier of toileting solutions for disabled, has developed its complete washroom package to enable school architects and management to access a simple solution to design and provide toilets that meet the needs of most- for up to 30 years, the company claims.

Under the unique scheme, a fully accessible washroom/ toilet can be designed, supplied, installed and commissioned through one single source, from simple grab rails through height adjustable changing tables and height adjustable washbasins to Clos-o-Mat height adjustable automatic ‘wash and dry’ bidet toilets. As a result, one appropriately designed and specified cubicle can fulfil the needs of as many users as possible, regardless of gender or physical or mental ability, reducing the need to install multiple separate facilities.

Robin Tuffley, Total Hygiene Marketing Manager, elaborates, “The new DCSF Building Bulletin 102- designing for disabled children and children with special educational needs- advises that accessible toilets and changing spaces for personal care are available at convenient intervals around the school.

“The Building Schools for the Future standard specification for toilets states toilet and changing facilities need to be designed to be suitable for all pupils, staff and visitors including those with special educational needs and disabilities. Each toilet block should have accessible toilets to the same quality and aesthetic as the other facilities. Further, the new BS8300:2009 Inclusive Building Design requires public buildings, including schools, to incorporate ‘Changing Places’ facilities whether a new build or under a refurbishment project.

“These requirements put huge pressure on budgets that are already stretched, but careful design can deliver, optimizing both capital and ‘whole life’ costs: in theory, fewer but more strategic cubicles could be created, as they would serve multiple functions, rather than banks of separate female, male and disabled facilities. We have Clos-o-Mats in educational establishments that are still in regular use 30 years after they were first installed: that equates to a daily cost of provision of only 20p/day!”

Total Hygiene has over 40 years’ experience of delivering ‘best practice’ toileting solutions. Its heritage means it can call on a wealth of in-house expertise to enable creation of a ‘washroom’ that meets the needs of most, whilst complying with all relevant legislative demands. Its Clos-o-Mat Palma ‘wash and dry’ automatic WC is the only unit of its kind with WRAS approval, and thus the only one that can be legally connected to the UK mains water supply.

Strathclyde University is just one location that has taken advantage of Total Hygiene’s proficiency, equipping faculty and student areas with Clos-o-Mat equipment for both disabled students and staff. Harlaw Academy has similarly installed Clos-o-Mat apparatus to meet the needs not only of disabled students, but of the wider community who use the school facilities ‘out of hours’.