Loo of the Year Awards: 2008 News

Asda is UK Overall Trophy Winner

ASDA has won the much coveted UK Winners Trophy in the 21st Anniversary Loo of the Year Awards competition to find the very best ‘away from home’ toilets in the UK.

Awards managing director, Mike Bone quotes - “The UK’s retailers are placing significantly increasing importance on provision of first class toilets that contain the facilities their customers need and expect when visiting their stores”. ASDA has continued to improve the quality of their customer toilets since winning the Loo of the Year Awards Individual Categories Trophy in 2007. This year ASDA have also won the new Age Friendly Facilities Trophy and were Scotland National Awards Winners for Babychange Facilities and Age Friendly Toilets entries”.

2008 was another record year with over 1700 separate entries received (across the expanded 60 different entry categories) over 18% above the previous year. Standards in Awards entrant’s toilets are also improving – 42% of the total entries achieved the top 5 Star grading (33% in 2007), 42% achieved a creditable 4 Star grading (41% in 2007) and 14% achieved a 3 Star grading.

Other major UK Trophy Winners were: Eastgate Shopping Centre Basildon for individual category entries, Highland Council for public toilet entries, J D Wetherspoon for corporate provider entries, West Wiltshire District Council for accessible facilities, East Lindsey District Council for adult/child changing facilities, McKillens (Ballymena) for babychange facilities, and South Lanarkshire Council for family friendly facilities.

Trophy winners in the associated Attendant of the Year Awards, for people who put the sparkle and pride into the UK’s toilets, were: Pencelli Castle Caravanning and Camping Park (individual attendant team), Northumberland County Council (in-house cleaning team) and TC Contractors (external contactor team).

Representatives from the top twenty Local Authorities public toilet providers – the Loo of the Year Awards ‘Premier League’, were honoured at the prestigious Awards Presentation held on 5th December at the National Motorcycle Museum, near Birmingham, along with thirty three members of the Awards ‘Champions League’, the Standards of Excellence for participants achieving five or more five star Award grades.

The 2008 Awards were run in association with Headline Sponsor Albany Washroom Services – with additional sponsorship provided by Armitage Shanks, The British Cleaning Council, Help the Aged and Hydro Nova Europe. The four national tourism bodies – Enjoy England, Visit Scotland, Visit Wales and The Northern Ireland Tourist Board continue their support.

Full results of the 2008 Awards are available on the Awards website.