Temporary toilets regulation review

Overview

Temporary toilets are predominately used in three types of situations

• Temporary worksites
• Events
• Situations where a permanent toilet is not available or increased numbers of toilets are temporarily required.

WA has historically been the only state to regulate prescriptive temporary toilet design and construction requirements. This is done through the Health (Temporary Sanitary Conveniences) Regulations 1997. The implementation of the Public Health Act 2016 necessitates the repeal and possible replacement of these regulations. 

Whilst reviewing the regulations the Department of Health became aware that the regulations are silent on how ambulant and accessible temporary toilets should be designed and constructed. This is resulting in toilet design styles which are not meeting the needs of persons with disability, persons with continence requirements and persons who require carers or assistance with toileting.

The Department of Health is seeking stakeholder feedback on options investigated to manage public health risks associated with temporary toilets design and construction in Western Australia into the future.

The DOH investigated four managment options:

 Option A: Retain status quo as far as practicable by replacing the current Health (Temporary Sanitary Conveniences) Regulations 1997 management systems with the same or similar requirements under the Public Health Act 2016.

Why your views matter

This consultation has been created to allow for the WA Department of Health to engage the community and key stakeholders on their preferred option and how the management of public health risks associated with temporary toilets design and construction should occur in the future. 

Stakeholder consultation promotes transparency, improves design and ensures risk are identified and managed early. It also allows for innovative ideas to be proposed for consideration.

This consultation provide an opportunity for industry and the public to raise issues, concerns and opportunities about the proposed options and provide advice on how the options considered will affect them, their business or working experience.  This paper contains a series of questions related to the options. You do not have to comment on all the questions, and can focus on those areas that are important to you. You are also welcome to provide additional feedback that may not be related to any of the questions. Please explain the reasons behind your suggestions, and where possible evidence to support your views (such as statistics), estimates of any costs that may relate to the proposal, and examples of solutions.

What happens next

Information provided will be collated into a publically available report on the Department of Health website.

Please note, that because your feedback forms part of a public consultation process, the Government may quote from your comments in future publications. If you prefer your name and organisation to remain confidential, please indicate that in your submission. As submissions made in response to this paper will be subject to Freedom of Information requests in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 1992, please do not include any personal or confidential information that you do not wish to become available to the public.

The Department will use the information gathered from this review as part of their submission to the Better Regulation Unit and for determining the support for the options considered going forward.

Stakeholders will be emailed a stakeholder consultation summary paper.