SIR - Further to Mr Payan's letter of March 12, when the council authorised closing the heavily-used public toilets on the Twickenham riverside, it clearly failed to consider the impact of its actions.

This is especially true on rugby days, when the pubs, restaurants and bars in the town centre are jammed with people who subsequently have nowhere to go to relieve themselves.

The result? They use the side streets. Obvious, isn't it?

Equally obvious is that those who benefit from the inundation of rugby fans - the bars, restaurants and pubs, plus the RFU, and the council (through taxes) - should remedy the situation, immediately.

And not just with three tiny cubicles promised in a proposed temporary caf at the back of a children's play area on the riverside.

Or with the plan for shopkeepers to provide facilities - do the shops that agreed to this scenario intend to cater for whole pubs full of drinkers?

We need proper loos now, of sufficient quality and quantity, to not only accommodate shoppers and visitors, but also to deal with the rugby hordes.

And while the council is pondering this, perhaps it could liaise with the rugby authorities to organise installations of Portaloos around the town centre on match days, to save us from the consequences of the breweries doing well out of rugby.

Yvonne Hewett, Thames Eyot, Twickenham

SIR - It beats me to see how Cllr Marlow believes that closing public lavatories around the borough shows an example of civic pride being returned to Richmond (Letters, March 12).

No-one is fooled into believing that going into shops and pubs to use their facilities, when they're available, will be a more convenient and pleasing choice than having publicly provided facilities.

The Green Party's report on lavatory facilities throughout London shows that Richmond is becoming one of the poorest providers.

In areas where similarly few public conveniences are available, the back streets stink of urine and it is not unusual to come across men and women urinating (or worse) in public places.

Peter Payan's letter (also March 12) was an illustration of how this behaviour is not uncommon locally.

Without doubt, this will be linked to drunkenness - another street problem in Richmond and Twickenham that, in spite of the council's spin, has not been tackled adequately.

Bouncers can be put on club doors, police can patrol high streets, but that won't make it more pleasant for the elderly or disabled to struggle inside to use the loos, nor will it prevent drunks from fouling litter bins and back streets -hardly an example of Cllr Marlow's civic pride.

Judy Maciejowska, Green Party candidate for the London Assembly, Haliburton Road, St Margarets