Charges will have to be made to use Weymouth’s seafront superloo when it is eventually built.

The £400,000-plus toilet block on the site of the former tourist information office is almost certain to be run by the new Weymouth Town Council.

Other public toilets in the town are also likely to come under the control of the new town authority which will be one of the biggest of its type in the country.

Borough councillors are recommending that the new council starts changing for using the Esplanade block as soon as it is opened to help pay for maintenance and running repairs. Charges of between 20p and 50p have been suggested.

On Tuesday the borough council management committee agreed to find between £370,000 and £424,000 for the building which will house a beach office, 22 unisex toilets, disabled-friendly toilets, a family room and beach showers as well as a single storey extension for two small lettable spaces including a beach kiosk.

The actual costs will not be known until tenders have been received in December or January.

The committee heard that an extra ‘modular’ toilet will also be put on the seafront towards the Pavilion end of the beach when the existing temporary toilets are removed from the Pavilion forecourt at the end of the season. The approximate cost of that has been put at £55,000.

The new superloo is not likely to be in operation until the 2020 season unless the existing tenant volunteer to surrender their leases early, or the council finds extra money to buy out the contracts before their term.

Cllr Ray Nowak supported finding an extra £24,000 for the new main toilets: “A vibrant town needs good facilities for the public, whether they are visitors or locals,” he said.

He also made a plea for re-instating the public toilets at Victoria Gardens, Portland which he said could be re-opened for £7,000.

“It would be a splendid opportunity to enhance the Gardens. When volunteers put on events they have to send people to a local pub to use the toilet.”

Speaking after the meeting Cllr Ian Bruce said that other sites for the new superloo should have been considered and that waiting for the leases to end on the former TIC building would lead to delay and a shortage of main beach loos during the 2019 season.

He claimed it would be possible to build a new toilet elsewhere on the Esplanade and keep the existing building as it is – together with a lease income which he estimated at around £50,000 a year. He said that this option had not been put to councillors but should have been.

During the committee meeting he was critical of the way the provision of toilets had been handled: “Councillors will want very good toilets for our town. This paper is wholly inadequate for what we want to do,” he said.